Russian President Vladimir Putin and Azerbaijan on Friday criticized “unacceptable” comments by French leader Emmanuel Macron on the decades-long conflict between archenemies Baku and Yerevan.
Neighbors in the Caucasus have fought two wars — in 2020 and in the 1990s — over Azerbaijan’s Armenian-populated Nagorno-Karabakh region.
Deadly clashes in September along the Armenian-Azerbaijani border have fueled fears of a new full-scale conflict.
Commenting on French television on Wednesday, Macron accused Russia of “destabilizing” the Caucasus and “trying to create disorder”.
The French leader’s statements “show a lack of understanding of the course of the conflict,” Putin said during a meeting of leaders of members of the Commonwealth of Independent States in Kazakhstan.
He added that Macron’s allegations “sounded wrong” and were “unacceptable”.
“There will be an opportunity” to “discuss” this with Macron, Putin said, as he also invited the leaders of Armenia and Azerbaijan to Russia for talks “anytime, anywhere.”
“Russia has always sincerely tried to resolve all conflicts, including those related to Karabakh,” he said.
Macron also accused Azerbaijan of starting “a terrible war with many deaths and cruel scenes”.
More recently, “Azerbaijan has launched several offensives along the border (with Armenia). We have judged them. We will not abandon the Armenians,” he said.
The Foreign Ministry in Baku reacted angrily on Friday, saying the comments were “unacceptable and biased”.
“Azerbaijan is being forced to reconsider France’s mediation efforts in the Armenian-Azerbaijani talks,” it said.
– Future Peace Treaty –
On Friday, Russia’s Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov, Armenia’s counterpart Ararat Mirzoyan and Azerbaijan’s Jeyhun Bayramov met for talks in the Kazakh capital Astana.
The foreign ministries of Russia, Armenia and Azerbaijan said the trio discussed joint efforts to normalize Azerbaijani-Armenian ties.
The meeting came amid growing Western engagement in the volatile Caucasus region, where Russia – distracted by its war in Ukraine – is visibly losing influence after decades of dominance.
On Wednesday, the Kremlin’s foreign policy adviser Yuri Ushakov criticized “attempts by non-regional actors – the EU and the US – to plug into our work in the region.”
With Moscow increasingly isolated on the world stage following its February invasion of Ukraine, the US and EU have taken a leading role in brokering peace talks between Armenia and Azerbaijan.
Last week, the European Union announced a “civilian EU mission” to Armenia to help demarcate borders with Azerbaijan.
After a series of diplomatic efforts from Brussels and Washington, the foreign ministers of Armenia and Azerbaijan met in Geneva on October 3 to begin drafting the text of a future peace treaty.
In September, more than 285 people were killed in border fighting on the Caucasus neighbors’ border before a US-brokered ceasefire ended the worst fighting since their 2020 war.
This six-week war in the fall of 2020 claimed the lives of more than 6,500 soldiers from both sides and ended in a Russian-brokered ceasefire.
Under the deal, Armenia ceded parts of territory it had controlled for decades, and Moscow dispatched about 2,000 Russian peacekeepers to oversee the fragile truce.
When the Soviet Union collapsed in 1991, ethnic Armenian separatists in Nagorno-Karabakh broke away from Azerbaijan. The ensuing conflict claimed around 30,000 lives.
