Moscow managed to convince Azerbaijan and Turkey that it is not necessary to create conditions and preconditions for “destruction of the agreements” on Nagorno-Karabakh, Russian President Vladimir Putin has said.
“As for the peacekeeping mission, yes, indeed, both Azerbaijan and Turkey, they have always talked about the possibility of Turkey’s participation in peacekeeping operations. I still think I managed to convince our Turkish partners and our colleagues in Azerbaijan that there is no need to create conditions that, or preconditions for the destruction of our agreements. Conditions that would provoke one of the contracting parties to some extreme measures and extreme actions,” Putin said in an interview with Russia 24 TV channel.
Putin explained that he means “a very difficult legacy of the past connected with the tragic bloody events of the First World War and genocide.
“This is a factor that can be recognized or not. Someone recognizes, someone in the world doesn’t. But there are no problems for Russia. We have long recognized this. But why provoke the Armenian side by the presence of Turkish soldiers on the line? It seems to me that President (Tayyip) Erdogan understood this perfectly well. We did not have any problems here,” the Russian president said.
The Russian leader stressed that Turkey has never hidden that it supports Azerbaijan in Nagorno-Karabakh, and this is one of the geopolitical consequences of the collapse of the USSR.
Vladimir Putin noted that the positions of Russia and Turkey do not always coincide, even diametrically diverge, but “the art of diplomacy is to find a compromise.”
