Meeting Initiated by Europe: What to Expect

The newspaper 'Zhoghovurd' reports that Charles Michel, the President of the European Council, will meet with the leaders of Armenia and Azerbaijan today in Brussels. Following this, Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan and Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev will sit down for negotiations this evening.

It is noteworthy that the last time Pashinyan and Aliyev met was on November 26 in Moscow, with the participation of Russian President Vladimir Putin. After that meeting, the leaders of the three countries issued a joint statement reaffirming their commitment to the consistent implementation and unconditional adherence to all provisions of the statements made on November 9, 2020, and January 11, 2021.

Furthermore, the parties also highlighted the important contribution of the Russian peacekeeping mission to the stabilization of the situation in the region and the provision of security.

Now, following the initiative of the Russian side, this time the two sides are meeting at the behest of Europe. Russian political analyst Grigory Trofimchuk does not have high expectations from these negotiations. In a conversation with 'Zhoghovurd', he noted that this has been a characteristic pattern of Armenian-Azerbaijani negotiations in recent years, where talks are held in both Russia and Europe.

“The support from Western partners for the resolution of the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict through diplomatic and political means has been weak. All senior European political figures, frankly speaking, are weak figures, including Charles Michel, who initiated the Brussels talks. Baku is quite pleased that the Minsk Group format is no longer functioning. The EU has not responded to this at all. Neither Moscow nor Brussels considers Nagorno-Karabakh to be non-Azerbaijani territory,” he noted.

For more details, see today’s issue of the newspaper.