Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan and President Ilham Aliyev of Azerbaijan will meet in Moscow next week, ahead of a scheduled meeting on June 1 in the Moldovan capital of Chisinau.
“We have received an invitation from the Russian side to hold a tripartite meeting at the highest level in Moscow on May 25, through the mediation of the Russian President, and we have accepted that proposal,” Pashinyan announced Thursday during his cabinet meeting.
The Moscow meeting will take place ahead of another round of talks between Pashinyan and Aliyev scheduled for June 1 and mediated by European Council President Charles Michel in Chisinau (pronounced Kishniyev). President Emmanuel Macron of France and German Chancellor Olaf Scholz will also take part in the talks.
Meanwhile, Armenia’s Foreign Minister Ararat Mirzoyan left for Moscow on Tuesday to meet with his Azerbaijani counterpart Jeyhun Bayramov on Friday in talks mediated by Russia’s top diplomat Sergei Lavrov.
Earlier this week, Lavrov accused the United States and its Western allies of pressuring Yerevan to “kick Russia out of Armenia,” saying that Moscow possessed intelligence that the U.S. wants Russia’s military and border patrol units out of Armenia and allegedly has pledged to provide American assistance for those tasks.
Mirzoyan and Bayramov held four-day-long talks in Washington at the invitation of Secretary of State Antony Blinken.
