(Reuters) – The Russian foreign ministry said late on Tuesday that it held talks with Armenian counterparts on the need to ease tensions between Armenia and Azerbaijan over the disputed Nagorno-Karabakh region.
Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Mikhail Galuzin met with Armenia’s two deputy foreign ministers and urged them to intensify efforts to normalise the situation in the region.
“The current situation in the region … causes serious concern,” the Russian foreign ministry said in a statement on its website. “The need to step up efforts on all tracks of the Armenian-Azerbaijani normalization was outlined in accordance with (ceasefire) agreements.”
Azerbaijan on Sunday established a checkpoint at the start of the Lachin Corridor, the only road route linking Armenia to Nagorno-Karabakh, in what Armenia called a “gross violation” of a Moscow-brokered 2020 ceasefire agreement between the two sides.
The U.S. has said it was “deeply concerned” about the checkpoint.
Nagorno-Karabakh is internationally recognised as part of Azerbaijan but largely populated by ethnic Armenians.
In 2020, Azerbaijan made significant territorial gains in a six-week war that killed thousands on both sides, before Moscow struck a ceasefire deal that included the dispatch of a Russian peacekeeping force to the region.
(Reporting by Lidia Kelly in Melbourne, editing by Deepa Babington)
