“Yes, such a meeting is being prepared, and it is prepared in the format of a video conference,” Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov told the Interfax news agency on Sunday.
Peskov gave no date for the talks. He told journalists on Monday that it is still not clear when the video conference will likely take place.
Armenia and Azerbaijan did not immediately confirm the announcement. In televised remarks aired late on Sunday, Prime Minister Nikol Pashinian said that no meeting with Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev has been scheduled for November 9, which will mark the first anniversary of the ceasefire.
An Armenian media outlet reported late last month that during the upcoming talks Aliyev and Pashinian will sign two Russian-drafted documents announcing the start of the demarcation of the Armenian-Azerbaijani border and the opening of transport links between the two South Caucasus states.
Pashinian met in Yerevan on Friday with Russia’s Deputy Prime Minister Alexei Overchuk, a co-chair of a Russian-Armenian-Azerbaijani task force dealing cross-border cargo traffic. Overchuk said that the group has made important decisions. Armenia and Azerbaijan will “retain sovereignty over roads passing through their territory,” he stressed.
In a statement issued later on Friday, the Russian Foreign Ministry likewise said the working group has reached an agreement to that effect. The ministry put that in the context of media speculation about the “so-called Zangezur corridor” that would connect Azerbaijan to its Nakhichevan exclave via Armenia’s Syunik province.
Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev has repeatedly claimed that the truce accord envisages such a permanent “corridor.” Armenian leaders deny that.