MOSCOW, January 17. /TASS/: Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov has called for expediting the unblocking of traffic along the Lachin corridor, the Russian foreign ministry said on Tuesday after his telephone conversation with his Azerbaijani counterpart, Jeyhun Bayramov.
"The Russian side stressed the need for the earliest possible unblocking of traffic along the Lachin corridor in accordance with the parameters stipulated in the November 9, 2020 trilateral top-level statement," the ministry said. "It was also emphasized that it is important to reach mutually acceptable solutions on all corresponding issues in order to resume comprehensive work on key tracks of Azerbaijani-Armenian normalization on the basis of the agreements between the leaders of Russia, Azerbaijan, and Armenia."
Apart from that, the ministers discussed a number of issues of the current bilateral agenda, the ministry added.
On December 12, 2022, several Azerbaijani nationals, who claimed to be environmental experts, blocked passage through the Lachin corridor, the only road linking Armenia and Nagorno-Karabakh where a Russian peacekeeping contingent is deployed. Azerbaijan said the protest action was not meant to block any roads and civilian vehicles were free to move in both directions.
Yerevan slammed this step as a provocation staged by Baku to cause a humanitarian collapse in the unrecognized republic. According to Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan, the road’s blockage has already caused food shortages in Nagorno-Karabakh. On December 14, Armenia turned to the European Court of Human Rights demanding it oblige Azerbaijan to unblock the Lachin corridor.
