A few minutes before the meeting of the foreign ministers of Russia, Armenia and Azerbaijan in Moscow, President of Azerbaijan Ilham Aliyev addressed the people of Azerbaijan with a message in which he stated that he doesn’t agree with the statement that the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict doesn’t have a military solution.

“The people of Azerbaijan have heard from the mediators and certain leaders of international organizations that the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict doesn’t have a military solution, but I have said that I don’t agree with this, and I was right. Negotiations have been going on for nearly 30 years. Has there been progress? Has Azerbaijan had its lands returned? How is the issue being solved now? It is being solved militarily, and then it will be solved politically,” Aliyev said.

Aliyev declared that if in Moscow the foreign minister of Armenia declares that “Karabakh is Armenia”, there can’t be any talk about negotiations and nobody can tell Azerbaijan otherwise. He also declared that Baku is giving Yerevan the final chance to return to the format of negotiations and withdraw its troops from Nagorno-Karabakh.

Moreover, he stated that a lot has to be clarified during the meeting of the Russian, Azerbaijani and Armenian foreign ministers in Moscow and, according to him, baseline principles need to be adopted. He added that the status-quo for settlement of the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict no longer exists.