Fuad Huseynaliyev: Armenia doesn’t believe in Russia's mediation on peace platform to please its patrons

Armenia does not believe that much in Russia's mediation on the peace platform to please its patrons in the West, Fuad Huseynaliyev, director of the Report Information Agency, said during the Business Morning program broadcast on the ARB 24 television channel.

"Russia acts both as a former mediator and as a participant in the November 2020 agreement. Currently, there is no hesitation or dissatisfaction on the part of Azerbaijan towards Russia. We have seen that Russian peacekeepers have sufficiently performed their duties within the framework of anti-terrorist operations. They did not get involved in any issues, and then they made it possible for the Armenian population to leave Karabakh. At present, a contact with Armenian residents staying there and wishing to accept Azerbaijani citizenship has been established normally in close cooperation with the Ministry of Defense of Azerbaijan and other structures. At the same time, the Armenian side does not believe that much in Russia's mediation and makes some accusations to please its patrons in the West. However, their accusations are baseless. In recent years, especially during the Patriotic War, Russia's actions were quite consistent with international law. We indeed had a lot of questions to the Russian side even before that, and even after the end of the war, we had questions about the activities of the peacekeepers. But recently, we see that the situation has changed a lot, and Azerbaijan had no objection to Russia's mediation from the beginning," he said.

On the statement of Armenian Parliament Speaker Alen Simonyan, who said "we are very close to peace", Huseynaliyev emphasized that, in recent times, Armenia has shown a more realistic approach to peace, and they (in Yerevan - ed.) realize that peace is important for Armenia today.

"Let's hope that this time the Armenians will keep their word and achieve peace. It seems to me that the conversation between President of Azerbaijan Ilham Aliyev and Prime Minister of Armenia Nikol Pashinyan at the St. Petersburg meeting will perhaps intensify the peace negotiations," he added.