There is no need to endow the Russian peacekeepers in Karabakh with a UN mandate, and both Baku and Yerevan agree with the modalities of their work and support it, Director of the Department of International Organizations of the Russian Foreign Ministry Petr Ilyichev said, Report informs via Russian media.
The idea of sending UN peacekeepers to Karabakh is hardly realistic, and the Russian peacekeeping contingent effectively solves the tasks of restoring peace and security in the region, Ilyichev said, adding that "the Russian peacekeeping contingent is effectively coping with all the tasks of restoring peace and security in the region."
"The Russian peacekeeping contingent remains the only guarantor of maintaining stability in the region. There is no need to give it a UN mandate, since the modalities of the activity of our peacekeepers are already clearly fixed in the first tripartite statement of the leaders of Russia, Azerbaijan and Armenia dated November 9, 2020. On this issue, there is a consensus among the parties to the dispute, and this fact is of key importance here," Ilyichev said.
According to him, it should be especially noted that "the activities of Russian peacekeepers are supported both in Baku and Yerevan," and the peacekeeping missions deployed under the mandate of the UN Security Council do not always enjoy the trust of the host states.
"In some cases, the latter favors the withdrawal of the Blue Helmets because of their low efficiency. Therefore, the question is not so much about who authorized the peacekeeping operation, but about the presence of goodwill on both sides of the conflict in its termination and elimination of consequences," Ilyichev said.