Russia will suggest that Armenia, Azerbaijan and Russia hold another trilateral summit, says Putin's aide

YEREVAN, 12 October. /ARKA/. The Russian Federation will suggest that Armenia, Azerbaijan and Russia hold another trilateral summit in the near future, Russian presidential aide Yuri Ushakov said according to RIA Novosti.

Putin will visit Kazakhstan on October 13-14 to participate in the Conference on Interaction and Confidence-Building Measures in Asia and in the CIS summit.

Putin is expected to have several meetings on the sidelines of the summit, particularly, with Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev.

"We will propose holding another summit in a trilateral format with the participation of the leaders of Russia, Azerbaijan and Armenia, and we hope that in the very near future we will be able to agree on the terms of its holding," Ushakov told reporters.

He noted that Russia supports normalization of relations between Azerbaijan and Armenia, and Moscow considers that "the key to achieving sustainable peace and solving all problems in the region lies through the implementation of trilateral agreements reached with the active participation of the Russian president.

"Of course, we see that extra-regional players, in particular, the EU and the U.S. are trying to get involved in this process of normalization of relations between Armenia and Azerbaijan. But they mostly use our developments and, of course, the fundamental agreements were reached in 2020 and 2021 with our active participation," Ushakov added.

EU ambassadors on Tuesday agreed to send a civilian mission to Armenia to be deployed along the border with Azerbaijan to build confidence and help them delimit their border.

The decision to deploy EU's civilian mission was reached earlier by Armenian and Azerbaijani leaders. Armenia expressed its agreement to encourage the EU civilian mission along the border with Azerbaijan at an October 6 meeting in Prague with Azerbaijani leader Aliyev, France's President Macron and European Council President Michel.

Azerbaijan agreed to cooperate with the mentioned mission to the extent it will be concerned. The mission is expected to start its work in October, for a maximum period of two months. 

EU's decision was decried by Russia. The spokeswoman for the Russian ministry Maria Zakharova described the decision as "yet another attempt to cut into the settlement between Azerbaijan and Armenia in any way, to squeeze Russia's mediation efforts."

The European Union has decided to send a mission to the border between Armenia and Azerbaijan, Armenian Foreign Minister Ararat Mirzoyan said today, TASS reported.

"At the initiative of French President Emmanuel Macron and European Council President Charles Michel, a meeting was held in Prague, where an agreement was reached that a European Union mission will visit Armenia to find out the facts, then they will probably prepare a report," Mirzoyan said, opening talks with Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov in Astana, Kazakhstan.

He said he has just been informed that "it seems that the European Union has already decided to send such a fact-finding mission". -0-