MOSCOW, December 25. /TASS/. The mandate of the OSCE Minsk Group on the Armenian-Azerbaijani settlement is no longer necessary, so Baku and Yerevan can jointly initiate the group’s dissolution, the Russian Foreign Ministry’s official spokeswoman, Maria Zakharova, said.
"The mandate of the OSCE Minsk Group on Nagorno-Karabakh has faded in importance. Therefore, all the related structures - the Minsk Group itself, the high-level planning group and the post of the OSCE chair-in-office’s envoy on Armenian-Azerbaijani settlement - are to be scrapped. We assume that a joint proposal by Baku and Yerevan to scrap these institutions would be the most efficient way towards making this decision," she said.
The spokeswoman went on to say that the stalemate began when Western countries de-facto blocked the work in this format.
"US and French co-chairs of the OSCE Minsk Group stopped their contacts with the Russian co-chairs in February 2022, and they did it on their own volition," she said. "The termination of contacts, Armenia’s recognition of Karabakh as part of Azerbaijan <…> have eventually brought the OSCE Minsk Group’s work to a halt."
Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan told the country’s parliament in June that the OSCE Minsk Group, comprising Russia, the United States and France, de-facto stopped its work after February 2022, when its co-chairs stopped all communications in this format.