Peskov: Armenia decided Karabakh status, not Russia

PanARMENIAN.Net – The decision on the status of Nagorno-Karabakh was made by Armenia’s authorities, and Russia has no involvement, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said.

“The only thing President Putin and Russia want is that, when discussing this issue, there should be no unnecessary references to us. Russia has absolutely nothing to do with this,” he said in an interview with Vesti journalist Pavel Zarubin, Interfax.ru reports.

Azerbaijan has expressed dissatisfaction that the Russian side continues to refer to the Karabakh issue, which it considers “exclusively an internal matter of Azerbaijan,” according to a statement by the Azerbaijani Foreign Ministry.

It states that Baku has conveyed, through diplomatic channels, its position to the Russian presidential administration, government, and Foreign Ministry regarding “the inadmissibility of using the Karabakh issue for political speculation, as well as expectations to cease such actions,” APA reports.

“Despite this, the topic continues to appear in the official political discourse of the Russian side. Thus, Russian presidential spokesman Dmitry Peskov, in an interview with the Vesti TV channel, while discussing Russian-Armenian relations, again commented on the question of which side – Russia or Armenia – first recognized the Karabakh region as part of Azerbaijan.

…The fact that the Karabakh region is an integral part of Azerbaijan is based not on any country’s decision, but on history, international law, and justice, which was once again confirmed and definitively consolidated as a result of the 44-day war in 2020 and the one-day anti-terrorist measures in 2023.

We would like to once again remind the Russian side that no country, including the Russian Federation, has ever questioned Azerbaijan’s territorial integrity, including the Karabakh region.

We reiterate our expectation to the Russian side that issues related to Azerbaijan’s sovereignty will not become a subject of public discussion at a time when Russian-Armenian relations are going through a complex phase,” the Azerbaijani Foreign Ministry said.

At a meeting with Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan, President Vladimir Putin stated:

“The most sensitive issue to this day – we understand this, we often talk about it – is everything related to Karabakh. We constantly return to this topic. And we know that both you and your colleagues have had, and continue to have, questions and certain dissatisfaction regarding the Collective Security Treaty Organization (CSTO). We constantly revisit this issue. But I think it is also obvious that after you recognized in Prague in 2022 that Karabakh is part of Azerbaijan, CSTO intervention in this process, which has taken on an intra-Azerbaijani character, would have been absolutely inappropriate in this matter concerning Karabakh’s reintegration, if we consider it part of Azerbaijan. This is not an assessment – I am not saying whether this is good or bad – but from the point of view of organizing peaceful life, I believe it probably made sense,” Putin said.

Source: PanArmenian.Net