MOSCOW (Combined Sources) — The status of Nagorno Karabakh will be determined in the future, Russian President Vladimir Putin said on Tuesday, November 17, in an interview with Russia TV.
Putin said he believes that the “end of war” agreement on Karabakh between Russia, Armenia, and Azerbaijan provides an opportunity to resolve the situation in the future. “The most important thing that has been accomplished is the cessation of bloodshed,” he said.
Putin noted that on October 19-20, an agreement was reached to end the fighting in Karabakh, but it was not successful.
He said that in October he persuaded Azerbaijan’s President Ilham Aliyev to stop hostilities on the condition of the return of Azerbaijani refugees to Shushi, but to Putin’s surprise, Armenia’s Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan didn’t agree and decided to continue the war.
According to Putin, the situation on the ground in Karabakh was at a critical point before the cessation of hostilities, the situation was changing each hour, and it was impossible to negotiate within the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) Minsk Group because of a lack of time.
The Russian president says that Armenia’s refusal of the current agreement on Karabakh would have been suicide for the country.
