“It is planned to discuss the implementation of the agreements reached on November 9 [2020] and January 11 [2021] as well as to outline further steps to strengthen stability and establish a peaceful life in the region,” the statement said, adding that the talks will be held upon the initiative of the Russian president.
The Kremlin also said that the Russian president will hold bilateral meetings with Pashinian and Aliyev.
In early November Putin’s spokesman Dmitry Peskov announced that a trilateral meeting of the leaders of Armenia, Azerbaijan and Russia was being prepared in Moscow. Russian state television Rossia 1 even reported then that the meeting could take place on the first anniversary of the Nagorno-Karabakh ceasefire on November 9. Shortly after that announcement Armenia’s prime minister denied that there was any agreement about such a meeting. No meeting eventually took place.
Meanwhile, the European Union said on Friday that during phone talks with Charles Michel, the president of the European Council, earlier last week Pashinian and Aliyev agreed to meet on the sidelines of the EU’s Eastern Partnership summit in Brussels on December 15.
“During the phone calls, the Armenian and Azerbaijani leaders have also agreed to establish a direct communication line, at the level of respective Ministers of Defense, to serve as an incident prevention mechanism,” the EU said.
Both Yerevan and Baku have confirmed the upcoming meeting in Brussels.
The issue of the restive Armenian-Azerbaijani border is likely to be high on the agenda of the upcoming meetings.
International calls for the two neighbors to engage in a process of delimitating and demarcating their Soviet-era border renewed after last week’s clashes that left at least seven Azerbaijani and six Armenian soldiers dead.
The November 16 fighting along the Armenian-Azerbaijani border that was stopped through Russian mediation proved the most serious incident after the 2020 war in Nagorno-Karabakh in which nearly 7,000 people were killed.
In last year’s war, Baku gained control of parts of Nagorno-Karabakh as well as adjacent territories that had been under the control of ethnic Armenian forces since the first war that lasted for nearly three years ended in 1994.
The second Karabakh war lasted for 44 days and was stopped due to a Russia-brokered ceasefire. Some 2,000 Russian troops were deployed in the region to monitor the ceasefire.