Armenia and Azerbaijan will negotiate peace in Moscow, says Russian government | World

Russian President Vladimir Putin invited the Armenian and Azerbaijani foreign ministers to Moscow for peace talks and called for the cessation of fighting in the separatist region.

Located in the Caucasus, Armenia and Azerbaijan belonged to the Soviet Union (1922-1991). Russia has a military alliance with the Armenians, but currently maintains good relations with the Azerbaijani government and is not interested in a conflict in the region.

Earlier this week, the President of Azerbaijan made any ceasefire conditional on the withdrawal of Armenian forces from Nagorno-Karabakh. Armenia said it is willing to work with the mediation group led by the United States, Russia and France, the Minsk Group, which has been in existence since the 1990s.

Also according to the Kremlin, Putin spoke with both Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliev and Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan.

• UNDERSTAND: The clashes involve a long-standing territorial dispute in the Caucasus

Nagorno-Karabakh conflict

Since September 27, Armenian separatists from the self-proclaimed Nagorno-Karabakh Republic and Azerbaijani forces have clashed. The official balance is between 300 and 400 dead, about fifty of them civilians.

This balance, however, is highly skewed and can be much higher, as each side claims to have eliminated thousands of enemy soldiers.

So far, several truce requests from the international community have been to no avail.

Furthermore, some 70,000 people, half of the population of Nagorno-Karabakh, had to leave their homes because of the conflict.