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At their meeting, a statement was adopted by the President of the Republic of Azerbaijan, the Prime Minister of the Republic of Armenia and the President of the Russian Federation.

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President of Russia Vladimir Putin: Colleagues,

We held three sessions today: first with the Armenian delegation, then with the Prime Minister of Armenia face to face, then with the Azerbaijani delegation, and then with the President of Azerbaijan face to face and finally we had trilateral talks for two hours or maybe a bit more.

We all agree that this was a very useful meeting. In my opinion, it created a very good atmosphere for potential agreements on a number of vital issues.

Today, we coordinated a joint statement. I must say that not everything was agreed upon, and some things had to be removed from the text, which was compiled by experts in advance. However, I agree with the common assessment that the meeting was useful and creates conditions for further steps in settling the situation in general. Importantly, when I say “in general” I am referring to the current events of the recent past and the developments that took place two years ago. We still managed to agree at that time on some important issues and today’s discussion shows that we can agree on the future for all our countries as well. When I say “all our countries,” I am referring to Russia, Azerbaijan and Armenia, and the other countries in the region, because all peoples living in this territory are interested in normalising relations.

For its part, Russia will do everything it can to reach a final and comprehensive agreement.

Thank you very much.

I would like to thank my colleagues – the Prime Minister of Armenia and the President of Azerbaijan for agreeing to come to Russia, to Sochi, for this discussion. As we agreed, we will continue this dialogue and the search for solutions with a view to ending this long-standing conflict.

Thank you very much. I am grateful to you.