YEREVAN, NOVEMBER 3, ARMENPRESS. Russia will continue cooperating with Turkey and use its entire influence in the region to prevent a military solution of the Nagorno Karabakh conflict, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said in an interview to Komersant newspaper.

Lavrov said that Moscow and Ankara are close partners and are able to display a flexible and pragmatic approach and cooperate with each other in a strategic vision.

He pointed out Syria and Libya to be the obvious examples of practical and substantive cooperation between the Russian and Turkish diplomats, militaries and intelligence agencies.

“The situation in case of Nagorno Karabakh principally differs, and I’ve partially spoken about this in my answers to the previous questions. I repeat, we have never hidden and we aren’t hiding that we are not in favor of a solution to the crisis by force, we seek a speedy halt in combat operations,” Lavrov said.

Lavrov emphasized that both the parties to the conflict, as well as their foreign partners should steadily adhere to the agreements on ceasefire, the creation of verification mechanisms and the re-launch of substantive negotiations by a concrete timetable.

“And although it wasn’t possible to achieve a stable ceasefire at once, we will continue using our entire influence in the region, we will work with our Turkish colleagues, in order to stop the further development of a military scenario, so that dialogue gets established between the sides, and so that we convince Baku and Yerevan to come to the negotiations table,” Lavrov said.

Editing and Translating by Stepan Kocharyan