Russia hopes issue of minefield maps in Karabakh resolved soon, top diplomat says

TASS, Russia

The minister stressed that Moscow thinks that all issues with humanitarian significance should be resolved as rapidly as possible and without any preconditions

BAKU, May 11. /TASS/. Moscow hopes that the issue surrounding the transfer of minefield maps of Nagorno-Karabakh by Armenia to Azerbaijan is resolved soon, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said at a joint press conference after talks with his Azerbaijani counterpart Jeyhun Bayramov on Tuesday.

"We discussed this issue [of minefield maps] a couple of days ago in Yerevan. It seemed to me that the Armenian leadership has the understanding of the necessity to resolve this issue. The first preliminary steps in this direction were made, I informed Azerbaijan’s leadership of them. We hope that this process will be significantly accelerated and will allow this problem to be resolved completely," the head Russian diplomat said.

The minister stressed that Moscow thinks that all issues with humanitarian significance should be resolved as rapidly as possible and without any preconditions. "I mean both the return of bodies of those killed, and information on the fate of those missing in action, the return of war prisoners and settling the problems related to the so-called material war remnants – in this case, the mines," he explained.

Renewed clashes between Azerbaijan and Armenia erupted on September 27, 2020, with intense battles raging in the disputed region of Nagorno-Karabakh. On November 9, Russian President Vladimir Putin, Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev and Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan signed a joint statement on a complete ceasefire in Nagorno-Karabakh starting from November 10. The Russian leader said the Azerbaijani and Armenian sides would maintain the positions that they had held and Russian peacekeepers would be deployed to the region.