In an interview with Kazakh Tengrinews.kz, Russia’s Defence Minister Sergey Shoygu expressed his beliefs that the time has come for Armenia and Azerbaijan to switch to bilateral contacts. He also said that very difficult work was being done in the context of Russian-Turkish relations and the latest operation was Nagorno-Karabakh. “That is what I would like to call it, because a huge number of arguments, elements, motives were involved in [the discussions]. After all, it is a big problem when two fraternal peoples, two close neighbours, those with whom we lived, and we will continue to live in peace, harmony and friendship are at enmity,” Shoygu argued.

“Our President Vladimir Putin made a titanic effort to end hostilities in the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict zone... and all parties had to be persuaded. That is, there was no one who would say: ‘I agree, just convince the other side.’ He had to convince everyone, of course. And we also spoke with our Turkish colleagues,” Shoygu added. He also spoke on the dynamics of Russian-Turkish cooperation. “If we speak about the relations with Turkey, we have rather difficult but effective work. Joint work. Difficult because it is being impeded, Turkey’s being a member of NATO impedes it as well. I would even call it a unique experience when one country is in NATO and the other is not. They find common language, carry out joint work, joint operations, find compromises where it seems impossible. But we find variants for solutions,” Shoygu emphasised.