Russian President Vladimir Putin and his Azerbaijani counterpart Ilham Aliyev will hold talks on Monday in Moscow, where the Azerbaijani president will be on a working visit.
According to the Kremlin press service, "it is planned to consider key issues of further development of Russia-Azerbaijan relations of strategic partnership and alliance, as well as to hold a thorough exchange of views on topical regional issues."
The leaders of the two countries will meet with veterans of the Baikal-Amur Mainline construction, which was supervised by Ilham Aliyev's father, future President of Azerbaijan Heydar Aliyev, who was then the first deputy chairman of the USSR Council of Ministers. This year marks the 50th anniversary of BAM, the construction of which was declared the All-Union Komsomol shock-work construction.
Previous high-level contacts
The last face-to-face meeting between Putin and Aliyev took place last October on the margins of the CIS summit in Bishkek. Since then, the presidents have spoken by phone several more times. In February, Putin congratulated Aliyev on his convincing victory in the extraordinary presidential elections in Azerbaijan, and in March, Aliyev congratulated Putin on his election for a new presidential term.
On March 24, in a conversation with Putin, the Azerbaijani leader expressed condolences over the terrorist attack in Crocus City Hall and strongly condemned the crime, expressing the solidarity of the Azerbaijani people with the Russian people.
Peacekeepers' mission
The current talks will take place against the backdrop of the completion of the Russian peacekeeping mission in Nagorno-Karabakh. On April 17, Russian presidential spokesman Dmitry Peskov confirmed that the withdrawal of Russian peacekeepers from the region had begun. According to Hikmet Hajiyev, an aide to the Azerbaijani president and head of the foreign policy department of the administration of the head of state, this was a mutual decision of the top leadership of the two countries.
The Russian peacekeeping contingent was deployed in Karabakh based on a joint statement signed in November 2020 by the presidents of Russia and Azerbaijan and Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan on the complete cessation of hostilities in the region. Later, a memorandum was signed on the establishment of a joint Russian-Turkish center to monitor the ceasefire in Nagorno-Karabakh and compliance with the terms of the trilateral agreements. The Russian peacekeeping contingent consisted of 1,960 servicemen with small arms, 90 armored personnel carriers, and 380 units of automobile and special equipment. The peacekeepers' stay was initially set for five years with an automatic extension for another five-year period, unless either side declared its intention to terminate the provision six months before the expiration of the term.
After another escalation of the situation in Nagorno-Karabakh in September 2023, the region was fully returned to Baku's control, and the president of the unrecognized Nagorno-Karabakh Republic, Samvel Shahramanyan, signed a decree on the termination of its existence as of January 1, 2024.
GSV "Russia - Islamic World"
Photo: official website of the President of the Russian Federation
Based on materials from TASS