News - Russia FM: Armenia PM Nikol Pashinyan himself closed Nagorno-Karabakh status issue

Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan himself closed the issue of the status of Nagorno-Karabakh, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov stated at a press conference Thursday. The Russian FM noted that after the signing of the tripartite statements and the start of their implementation, the EU and the US began to actively intervene in the process. "[Russian President] Putin, not [French President] Macron, played an important role in achieving a tripartite agreement between Armenia, Azerbaijan, and the Russian Federation. After those agreements began to come into effect, mechanisms for unblocking [regional] routes and border delimitation were created, then the Europeans and Americans began to be actively engaged in this process," said Lavrov. According to him, in November 2020 and subsequent documents, the territory of Karabakh was described as the zone of the Russian peacekeeping contingent, and there was an understanding between the leaders of the three countries that negotiations were underway on the topic of status, and that they still need to continue in order to agree on this matter once and for all. "Imagine our surprise when in the fall of 2022, Macron held a conference of the European Political Community in Prague... and at the meeting they approved a document stating that Azerbaijan and Armenia recognize each other's territorial integrity in accordance with the Almaty declaration. This meant the recognition of Nagorno-Karabakh as an autonomous region within the Azerbaijan SSR. We [i.e. Russia] did not know that such a statement was being prepared. And when it was made, we made our conclusion that we reported in Baku that the issue of the status of Karabakh was closed; it was closed by the prime minister of Armenia himself," said the Russian FM.