Yerevan /Mediamax/. Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said that “the enthusiastic reviews of the first few days after the meeting [between the leaders of the U.S., Armenia, and Azerbaijan] in Washington were later replaced by skeptical assessments after the document was published.”

Lavrov made the remarks on September 8 at MGIMO University during a meeting with students and faculty, responding to a question about Russia’s diplomatic priorities in the South Caucasus.

The Russian minister recalled that Russia, on behalf of President Vladimir Putin, played “a decisive role in halting the second Karabakh war.”

“All this could have been stopped much earlier, but not everyone was ready for that,” Lavrov noted.

“We see that the decision to finalize a peace treaty – based on the agreements reached between the presidents of Russia, Armenia, and Azerbaijan in 2020-2022 – was made to do so on the territory of the United States. This is the sovereign right of our neighbors. But we need to see how it will work, because all the enthusiastic reviews that were heard in the first few days after the meeting in Washington were then replaced by skeptical assessments after the document was published. As it turns out, not everything has been agreed upon. There is a genre in foreign policy where you need to do something striking and play it up nicely in the media. I believe that this method has a right to exist in certain situations, but if nothing follows, it will remain just a “flare.” We are interested in seeing a real peace treaty concluded.

In this regard, we welcome the process of normalizing relations between Armenia and Turkey. Another round of talks took place recently. It was announced (at least, according to the analysis of events) that, according to some sources, Turkey no longer links the restoration of relations with Armenia to the complete normalization of Armenian-Azerbaijani relations. Another step forward is the recent resumption of diplomatic relations between Armenia and Pakistan. We hope that efforts will resume on the initiative proposed by Turkey and Azerbaijan to establish the ‘3+3’ platform, bringing together the three South Caucasus countries – Armenia, Azerbaijan, and Georgia – and their three major neighbors: Iran, Turkey, and Russia. We held a couple of meetings at the ministerial level in 2023, as well as meetings at the deputy ministerial level. We believe that now is the time to resume this format. Our Iranian neighbors support this process. Turkey and Azerbaijan were the initiators of this platform. I hope that we will meet in the near future,” Lavrov said.