Putin invites Armenia, Azerbaijan leaders to Russia

According to Russian Foreign Ministry Spokeswoman Maria Zakharova, who confirmed the news on Monday, Moscow is concerned about the “alarming trends” in the region, “where the West is clearly trying to transfer the confrontational schemes tested in Ukraine,” Russia Today reported.

“Russian President [Vladimir] Putin invited the President of Azerbaijan [Ilham] Aliyev and Prime Minister of Armenia [Nikol] Pashinyan to Russia for the next trilateral summit, where it is planned to discuss a whole range of trilateral and bilateral issues,” Zakharova said in a statement.

Commenting on the process of bringing the decades-long conflict between Armenia and Azerbaijan to an end, the spokeswoman accused the West of pursuing a “tactless and aggressive” approach.

“The true goals of Washington and Brussels are by no means the search for a compromise or balanced solutions, but self-promotion and squeezing Russia out of the South Caucasus,” Zakharova claimed.

The same approach, she added, can be seen in apparent “attempts by external forces to sow enmity between Moscow and Yerevan” and in their efforts “to discredit Russia’s policy in the region.”

The attempts of these “external forces” to ensure the withdrawal of Russian peacekeepers from Karabakh – a region that is at the center of the dispute between Yerevan and Baku – “are precisely aimed at destabilizing the South Caucasus,” Zakharova said.

RHM/PR