Russian Foreign Ministry comments on Karabakh separatists' trip to Moscow  

“The trip of these persons, if any, was exclusively private. As such, it does not contradict either the Russian law, existing international agreements, or Russia's mediation mission in the Nagorno-Karabakh settlement. No meetings with Russian officials  were held," the Information and Press Department of the Russian Ministry of Foreign Affairs said in a statement regarding the Moscow visit of Masis Mailyan and Lernik Hovhannisyan, the "representatives" of the illegal regime created in the presently occupied Nagorno-Karabakh region of Azerbaijan.

Report's Russian bureau informs that, according to the statement, the "representative office of the 'separatist regime' is not registered with the government of the Russian Federation as a diplomatic mission of a sovereign state," because Russia does not recognize the so-called "Nagorno-Karabakh Republic."

"For our part, we will continue to contribute to the achievement of solution to the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict, both as one of the OSCE Minsk Group co-chairs on Nagorno-Karabakh settlement, and in national quality, given our relations with Azerbaijan and Armenia," the statement said.

Azerbaijan earlier handed a note of protest to Russia.