MOSCOW, November 22. /TASS/. The work on the November 9 joint statement on Nagorno-Karabakh was conducted jointly by the leader of the three nations, namely, Russia, Azerbaijan and Armenia, who signed it, Russian President Vladimir Putin said on Sunday.
"As for the text, we worked on it together: I, naturally, President [of Azerbaijan Ilham] Aliyev and Prime Minister [of Armenia Nikol] Pashinyan," Putin said in an interview with the Moscow.Kremlin.Putin program on the Rossiya-1 television channel.
"This was the only possible way," he stressed.
According to the Russian leader, as a matter of fact, these were agreements between two sides - Azerbaijan and Armenia, whereas "Russia was only a mediator and undertook under this document to carry out peaceful disengagement." "This is what we are doing now," he said. "So, the three sides are the authors [of the joint statement]."
When asked to comment on a footage aired earlier in the program where he said he had written the document "on his own," Putin noted he had meant a statement he had done after the signing of the joint statement.
Renewed clashes between Azerbaijan and Armenia erupted on September 27, with intense battles raging in the disputed region of Nagorno-Karabakh. The area experienced flare-ups of violence in the summer of 2014, in April 2016 and this past July.
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. Under the document, the Azerbaijani and Armenian sides are to maintain the positions that they held and Russian peacekeepers are to be deployed to the region.