ISTANBUL, March 29. /TASS/. Moscow expects tensions in Nagorno-Karabakh to be resolved on the basis of a November 9, 2020 trilateral statement by the leaders of Russia, Azerbaijan and Armenia, Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Andrey Rudenko told TASS on Tuesday.
"We expect that all this will still be settled within the framework of the trilateral statement of the leaders of Armenia, Azerbaijan and Russia, signed on November 9, 2020," he said.
The question of whether Azerbaijani troops will be withdrawn to their previous positions, he said, should be addressed to Baku. "The [Russian] Foreign Ministry made its statement expressing concern about the escalation of tensions in the Karabakh zone," Rudenko pointed out.
The Russian Defense Ministry said on March 26 that Azerbaijan’s forces had entered into the zone of responsibility of the Russian peacekeeping contingent in Nagorno-Karabakh. On Sunday evening, it said that Azerbaijan had pulled its forces out of the community of Farukh (Parukh) in Nagorno-Karabakh.
Earlier, the Armenian Foreign Ministry said that Azerbaijani forces intruded into the village of Parukh, the Askeran District of Nagorno-Karabakh at about 15:00 Moscow time. Yerevan accused Baku of disrupting gas supply to Nagorno-Karabakh in the area of Shusha.
Tensions in Nagorno-Karabakh aggravated on September 27, 2020, when hostilities flared up there. On November 9, Russian President Vladimir Putin, Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev and Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan signed a trilateral statement on the cessation of hostilities in the area of the conflict. The Azerbaijani and Armenian forces stopped at the positions they were holding at the moment, a number of districts were placed under Baku’s control and Russian peacekeepers were deployed along the engagement line and the Lachin corridor.