YEREVAN, JANUARY 17, ARMENPRESS. During an annual press conference Russia’s Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov, in response to a provocative question of an Azerbaijani reporter, said the implementation of military operations in Nagorno Karabakh is not Azerbaijan’s internal affair, reports “Armenpress”.

The Azerbaijani reporter asked the FM whether Russia will intervene in “Azerbaijan’s internal affairs” if the Azerbaijani side launches military operations in Nagorno Karabakh. This statement is a cold shower for the Azerbaijani society. The response to a question over blogger Lapshin was also very clear.

The Russian FM made a statement sobering Azerbaijan where he recalled that the conflict settlement has several options which were adopted by the UN at the hottest time of the conflict. Lavrov said the decisions define that the conflict must be settled without the use of force and with clarification of the final status of Nagorno Karabakh.

“This is enshrined in the documents prepared by the OSCE Minsk Group through the Co-Chairs, it is enshrined in numerous statements adopted by the Presidents of the co-chairing countries, Russia, France and US, as well as in the statements and documents adopted by the Presidents of Armenia and Azerbaijan. The peaceful settlement of the disputes is enshrined there with no ambiguous meaning”, the Russian FM said.

He considered alarming the bloody events that took place in April, 2016. “Russia played a decisive role in stopping the bloodshed. We have agreed with President Sargsyan and President Aliyev at the meeting in Vienna, then Russian President Putin reached an agreement with them in June in Petersburg that taking into account the mutual accusations it is necessary to install a mechanism for investigating the incidents, to increase the number of OSCE observers in the line of contact. The necessity of investigation of incidents was also emphasized in 2011 during the meeting of the Presidents of Russia, Armenia and Azerbaijan in Astrakhan. Unfortunately, such simple thing, the investigation of incidents and increase of number of observers, cannot be implemented since there is no consensus yet”, Lavrov said. 

During the press conference Lavrov also talked about the situation of Russian-Israeli blogger Aleksandr Lapshin who is arrested in Belarus. In the past years Lapshin visited the Nagorno Karabakh Republic for several times for which he was appeared in Azerbaijan’s list of unwanted people. Official Baku demands from the Belarussian leadership Lapshin’s extradition.

“We oppose the criminalization of any individual’s or reporter’s visit to any location of any region. We also oppose the extradition of arrested Russian citizens in any country to third countries. We have contacted Mr. Lapshin through the consul. We know that he is also an Israeli citizen and Israeli diplomats have also contacted him. We will take every measures to settle this situation by fully respecting the rights of the Russian citizen”, Lavrov said, adding they maintain contact with Lapshin.