MOSCOW, November 25. /TASS/. Moscow continues to assist Baku and Yerevan in resolving the conflict, but talks between Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev and Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan are not planned in Russia in the near future, Kremlin Spokesman Dmitry Peskov told reporters on Friday.
"It's not that Russia is not ready - Russia is continuously working to assist the two states in resolving the situation and signing a peace treaty," the Kremlin spokesman said in reply to a question about whether Russia was ready to provide a platform for talks between the two leaders.
However, according to Peskov, no such meeting is planned in Russia for the time being. "Not in the short term," the spokesman said in reply to a corresponding question.
Earlier, Aliyev said that their next meeting with Pashinyan was to be held in Brussels on December 7. However, he added, referring to his aide, "the Armenian prime minister wants to meet only if [French President] Emmanuel Macron is there." The Azerbaijani leader stressed that the meeting would not take place under these conditions, taking into account that France had taken the side of one of the parties to the conflict: Armenia.
Russia has repeatedly acted as a mediator in resolving the situation between Baku and Yerevan, including hosting talks between the leaders of Armenia and Azerbaijan. With the mediation of Moscow in November 2020, a statement on the full cessation of hostilities in Nagorno-Karabakh was adopted. And in January 2021, a joint statement on new infrastructure projects in Karabakh was signed after a trilateral meeting in the Kremlin (with the participation of Russian President Vladimir Putin).