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Also attending the meeting were Prime Minister of Armenia Nikol Pashinyan, President of Belarus Alexander Lukashenko, President of Kazakhstan Kassym-Jomart Tokayev, President of Kyrgyzstan Sadyr Japarov, President of Tajikistan Emomali Rahmon and CSTO Secretary General Stanislav Zas.

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President of Russia Vladimir Putin: Colleagues,

As everyone is well aware, Russia has always – in historical perspective – placed emphasis on stability in this region and supported our Armenian friends in ensuring the security of the Armenian people, since ancient times.

As for the Armenian-Azerbaijani settlement, we continue making every effort to achieve a comprehensive and thorough normalisation of relations between Baku and Yerevan. I would like to note at the outset something that is clear and obvious to everyone: in recent past, Azerbaijan and Armenia, and Russia too, we were all part of a single state. Russia has strong ties with both Yerevan and Baku, and it is simply impossible not to take this into account. That puts all of us in a rather difficult position. But we certainly cannot stay away from the problems and disagreements between the states Russia is so close to and we are invariably ready to contribute to a peaceful resolution of their differences. And we undoubtedly are generally interested in making the South Caucasus a peaceful and steadily developing region.

Without a doubt, the only possible and realistic path to peace is the one through strict compliance, by the parties, with all the provisions of the well-known joint statements of the leaders of Russia, Armenia and Azerbaijan – I am not going to list all this now.

Only through the consistent implementation of these agreements, through delimitation of the Armenian-Azerbaijani border, freeing up transport services, and resolving humanitarian issues will it be possible to achieve a sustainable normalisation between Armenia and Azerbaijan. The Prime Minister of Armenia and I have discussed this many times, and I understand that our colleague fully agrees with this. The question is how to find these solutions. It is not easy, but you can only find them on this path. In the future, this will pave the way to a peace treaty.

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