Sunday, November 1 2020 21:08

ArmInfo. Moscow and Ankara maintain the closest contacts on the Karabakh issue. Russian Ambassador to Turkey Alexei Yerkhov stated this in an interview with  Interfax.

The diplomat recalled that on October 10 this year, a  meeting of the foreign ministers of Russia, Azerbaijan and Armenia  was held in Moscow. Its final statement clearly states that the  settlement mechanism remains unchanged. This means that international  efforts to ensure the cessation of hostilities and negotiations on a  settlement are concentrated within the framework of the Minsk Group,  of which, as you know, Russia, the United States and France are  co-chairs. "Turkey, let me remind you, is a member of it. Well, this  is how it goes: contacts are taking place in Moscow, in Washington,  where the foreign ministers of Azerbaijan and Armenia were recently  received, the Minsk Group co-chairs have just met in Geneva," noted  the Russian ambassador. He stressed that Moscow and Ankara maintain  the closest contacts on this issue. "Our presidents and foreign  ministers have repeatedly discussed it. And we must take into account  the main thing: there are battles, people are dying, so if someone  now has the slightest opportunity to influence the development of  events, to make any real contribution to achieving an end fire, it  must be used. And, naturally, everyone now needs to refrain from  steps that can add combustible material to the fire of this conflict,  "the diplomat said. Answering the question whether the repeated calls  of Russia to refrain from direct involvement in the Karabakh  conflict, including on the issue of transferring militants from Syria  and Libya to the conflict zone, the ambassador stressed that,  unfortunately, they do it primarily through means mass media,  information about the presence in the conflict zone of militants  arriving there from Syria and, possibly, other "hot spots".

 "For example, I myself have seen video clips in which captured  militants give curious testimony, moreover, in the Syrian dialect of  the Arabic language. And even the well-known Syrian Observatory for  Human Rights, whose statistics are so fond of citing our Western  partners, reports not only about mass participation of militants in  the Karabakh conflict, but also about the death of more than two  hundred of them to date. As press secretary of the Russian President  Dmitry Peskov and other Russian officials said, "the presence of  militants in the hot conflict zone these days is a great danger and  is a reason for deep concern of Russia ", - stated the head of the  Russian diplomatic mission in Ankara.