Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov’s statement and answers to media questions following talks with Foreign Minister of the Republic of Azerbaijan Jeyhun Bayramov, Baku, June 24, 2022

Mr Bayramov,

Ladies and gentlemen,

Speaking on behalf of the Russian delegation and myself personally, I would like to express gratitude to our Azerbaijani hosts for a traditionally warm and hospitable welcome and the excellent organisation of our joint work.

I would like to express special thanks to President of the Republic of Azerbaijan Ilham Aliyev, who received us yesterday and with whom we had a long, trust-based and beneficial conversation.

Today, Mr Bayramov and I had comprehensive talks jointly with our delegations in keeping with the instructions coordinated between our presidents, which were reaffirmed by the leader of Azerbaijan yesterday and are being implemented in the context of a new quality of our relations defined as allied cooperation. We reached this level of our relations long ago. During an official visit by President Ilham Aliyev to Moscow on February 22, 2022, it was formalised in a declaration that became a new landmark in the development of our relations. Several dozen industry-specific and interdepartmental agreements are being prepared in accordance with that declaration. Some of them are ready for signing, and we have agreed to expedite our experts’ work on the rest.

We maintain regular contacts at the level of presidents and foreign ministers. This is my fourth meeting with Jeyhun Bayramov this year. Our agencies responsible for practical interaction maintain permanent ties. One of them is the Intergovernmental Commission on Trade and Economic Cooperation, which formulated a number of useful recommendations at its April meeting. This will allow us to efficiently develop and deepen our economic, investment and financial interaction based on new terms.

I would like to mention our achievements in trade. It reached a new historic high of nearly $3.5 billion in 2021. The next item on our agenda is to promote the implementation of flagship projects, such as the manufacturing of GAZ lorries and the development of a Russian Helicopters’ maintenance centre. Another new project we have agreed to coordinate in detail is the North-South corridor, in particular the section that runs via Russia, Azerbaijan and Iran.

We can confirm that Russian businesses are interested in joining the post-conflict restoration of Azerbaijani territories.

We encourage the holding of regular business missions and meetings as part of business forums.

Inter-parliamentary cooperation is developing. We are particularly pleased with the progress in cultural, humanitarian and educational ties. We appreciate our Azerbaijani friends’ exemplary attitude towards the Russian language and culture. We will continue collaborating in this sphere.

This year over 20 events dedicated to the 30th anniversary of diplomatic relations are included in our humanitarian efforts. Collections of Russian-Azerbaijani documents have been published for this anniversary. The Days of Azerbaijani Culture in Russia festival will continue this autumn. The Russian Ethnographic Museum will hold the exhibition, Russian Beauties, in Azerbaijan, and Russian theatre companies will be on tour as well.

There are also plans to hold the Days of Russian Culture in Azerbaijan, a new Librarians’ Dialogue forum, and a number of other events. Based on our presidents’ instructions, and through practical actions, we continue to enhance a friendship and mutual respect that has linked the peoples of Russia and Azerbaijan for centuries, and which we inherited from our ancestors.

Today, we have signed yet another document intended to consolidate our legal framework. I am referring to the Agreement between the Government of the Russian Federation and the Government of the Republic of Azerbaijan on Cooperation in International Information Security. We have agreed to review our legal framework, which is composed of more than 200 documents adopted over the past 30 years. It is important to see what additional steps need to be taken for it to meet today’s requirements.

We stated that our approaches to the majority of key international issues are either identical or close. We discussed the tasks involved in strengthening peace, security and stability in the South Caucasus. We have confirmed that there is no alternative to implementing all the agreements fixed in the three statements by the leaders of Azerbaijan, Armenia, and Russia, signed on November 9, 2020, and January 11 and November 26, 2021, which are related to most aspects of the post-conflict settlement in the region. We expressed satisfaction with the Deputy Prime Ministers’ work in the Trilateral Working Group tasked with unblocking the transport and economic connections in the South Caucasus. They met in Moscow on June 3 and held yet another informal meeting on the sidelines of the 25th St Petersburg International Economic Forum two weeks later. We agreed that the latest meetings have resulted in substantial progress in achieving final agreements on rail and motor routes.

We underscored the need for resuming and continuing the work of the commission on the delimitation of the Armenian-Azerbaijani border as soon as possible. Under an agreement between the leaders of three countries, the Russian side will be ready to provide the required consultative services and to facilitate the conclusion of a peace treaty between Baku and Yerevan, as advocated by our Azerbaijani friends.

We agreed it is necessary to continue interaction within the 3+3 format, namely, the three countries of the South Caucasus and their big neighbours (Iran, Turkey and the Russian Federation).

We focused on the Caspian issues. Yesterday, at our meeting with the President, and during our talks today, we prioritised the need to fulfil completely the main document, namely, the Convention on the Legal Status of the Caspian Sea. We reached a consensus that the leaders of the five littoral Caspian states will reaffirm the significance of this document and its key principles at their June 29, 2022 meeting in Ashgabat.

We shared assessments and information regarding the course of the special military operation, conducted by the Russian Armed Forces in Ukraine together with the militias of the Donetsk and Lugansk people’s republics. We appreciate the well-thought-out and responsible attitude of the Azerbaijani leadership towards current developments and the understanding of various circumstances that accumulated for many years and that led to the current situation in the sphere of European security, rather than just in Ukraine and around it. Earlier, the entire European security architecture had been coordinated; however, our Western colleagues purposefully demolished it in the past few years.

We also maintain dialogue on a number of other issues on the regional and international agenda, including interaction at the UN and the OSCE. We are satisfied with the development of our diplomatic dialogue, which obviously helps supplement bilateral economic, cultural and other ties with foreign policy cooperation.

Thank you once again for the invitation and the hospitality that we always feel here.

Question: President of Azerbaijan Ilham Aliyev said it is time “to say farewell” to the mediation of the OSCE Minsk Group on the Nagorno-Karabakh settlement because it has not achieved anything in the past 20 years. Does Russia share this view? What new formats on the Nagorno-Karabakh settlement can Russia and Azerbaijan suggest to replace the OSCE Minsk Group? Did you discuss this today?

Sergey Lavrov: We did not discuss the Minsk Group because it has suspended its activities at the initiative of the American and French parties. We talked about post-conflict settlement. The three trilateral statements by the leaders of Russia, Azerbaijan and Armenia created the foundation for today’s efforts to settle this issue. Basically, after the developments in September, October and November 2020, all the proposals that had been discussed for many years without visible results were “overtaken by events,” as they say. The events “on the ground” made the previous documents less relevant. This is an objective reality. The three statements signed by the leaders of Russia, Azerbaijan and Armenia are now universally recognised as the foundation for moving towards the final solution of the outstanding issues.

This is our point of departure. Our European neighbours are aware of this. Now they are trying hard to become involved in resolving the remaining issues. All of them acknowledge that the goals are set forth in the above documents. Except for the ultimate goal, they have nothing to do with the activities of the OSCE Minsk Group or its groundwork. The final goal was to free the regions around Nagorno-Karabakh and normalise life for Nagorno-Karabakh and its people.

Question: The meeting participants broadly discussed the issues of building peace in the region, including the delimitation of borders and the redevelopment of regional connections. However, observations from the sidelines suggest that Armenia is again trying to avoid its commitments while gaining time in the process. Revanchist aspirations are strong there. Obviously, a decision to normalise relations requires substantial political will, and Azerbaijan has been displaying this. What do you think about the role of the international community, particularly Russia, in ensuring Armenia’s unambiguous approach to this issue?

Sergey Lavrov: You have made a serious statement. We talked about this with the Prime Minister and the Foreign Minister when we were in Yerevan a couple of weeks ago. They confirmed their willingness to take part in the second meeting of the border delimitation commission. The parties agreed to meet in Moscow (on our territory). Now we are deciding on dates that will suit both sides.

I have not seen any signs that the parties have changed their minds, or that one of them is reluctant to take part in this work. On the contrary, I received confirmation in Yerevan and at today’s talks, that delimitation is an important component of all the efforts at this point.

Thank you for saying the international community, that is, Russia.

Question: Ukraine and Moldova are now official candidates for EU membership. Charles Michel said this was a historic moment. Do you think this EU step has practical implications? Or is it just an expression of spite against Russia?

Sergey Lavrov: We have always proceeded from the premise that the EU is not a military-political bloc. Unlike NATO, its relations with any willing country do not create any threat or risk for us. President Putin reiterated this in his remarks at the St Petersburg International Economic Forum.

However, we are fully aware of the fact that the EU has gone through a rapid evolution, not to say mimicry, over the past several years and has taken on an aggressive ideology-driven, primarily Russophobic, undertone. Whenever they strictly lecture countries that are either candidates for EU membership or are striving to become candidates, the EU leaders mince no words saying that a candidate country has no choice but to support every EU policy in the international arena, including its every action against the Russian Federation (this is almost verbatim). This is how EU officials express their demands, in particular, to Serbia. That country is an EU candidate, but like every other country, it is strongly against losing its independence and supporting decisions that flatly contradict its fundamental interests, in this case, its relations with Russia. Our country was one of the few countries that stood with Yugoslavia when NATO perpetrated its aggression against Yugoslavia in flagrant violation of every OSCE principle. This was the first time OSCE countries attacked and bombed another OSCE member, including its civilian infrastructure. Bridges, passenger trains, a television centre and other civilian sites were targeted. Serbia does not want to forget the fact that Russia stood up for it back then. It is necessary to, at least, show some respect for the Serbian people and their historical memory. I’m not even talking about earlier history, like WWII and other milestone events in our common history.

The EU’s brazen and wanton requirement is that if a country wants to be an EU candidate it must maintain a Russophobic position all the way to membership. The EU makes it clear that it does not want to see any unifying trend in Europe, is not complying and is not going to comply with the existing agreements between the Russian Federation and the EU on moving toward common spaces in the economy, research and education, and domestic security, and is unwilling to pursue lofty goals like creating a common space from the Atlantic Ocean to the Pacific Ocean, to name a few. All of that is history. Let’s be realistic about the EU’s actions and track its actual steps and see how the candidate countries comply with these requirements or try to show their independence.

We have few illusions that the EU’s current Russophobic charge will dissipate or change any time soon or even in the long run. The path that the Europeans have adopted is reminiscent of World War II’s early days. Hitler put together a large number, if not most, of the European countries to attack the Soviet Union. Right now, in a similar way, the EU and NATO, among others, are putting together a coalition to oppose, or by and large, “wage war” against the Russian Federation.

We will track this situation closely.

Question: My question concerns media cooperation between Russia and Azerbaijan. As you noted, an agreement on information security cooperation between the Republic of Azerbaijan and the Russian Federation was signed during the meeting today. The media is an area that, unfortunately, is experiencing certain problems. In particular, several Azerbaijani media outlets are blocked in Russia. Russia’s RIA Novosti is blocked in Azerbaijan, for reasons we all know. In view of these issues and the agreements on information security cooperation signed today, what would be your assessment of the current level of media cooperation between Azerbaijan and Russia and the prospects for its future development?

Sergey Lavrov: These are two completely different issues.

The agreement that was signed today on international information security does not concern the media industry. It concerns the problems existing in cyberspace as a result of attempts to use it for military purposes. These are issues that have been discussed by the United Nations for a long time, and Russia initiated these discussions. The UN has established ad hoc groups working on rules of conduct in cyberspace, to prevent military uses and also criminal uses of cyberspace.

As for the mass media, we discussed this matter today, as well as yesterday with the President of Azerbaijan. We understand why the parties adopt certain decisions and are familiar with the examples that each party quotes.

We have a common understanding that, based on respect for each other’s laws and respect for the freedom of information that relies on these laws, we will hold a special series of events between the senior managers of the major Russian and Azerbaijani media outlets, including owners of social media. We will have an honest conversation about the way Russian and Azerbaijani media cover the events in each other’s territory, in compliance with the respective laws. We have agreed that these consultations will be held under the aegis of our foreign ministries’ press departments.