Azerbaijan and Armenia are not ready to sign a peace treaty under any conditions; some difficult issues still need to be resolved. Denis Gonchar, Director of the Fourth Department of the CIS Countries of the Russian Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MFA), said this in an interview with TASS.

"The signals being received from Baku and Yerevan about urgently to achieve peace do not mean that the parties are ready to agree to any conditions. There still is a need to find solutions for a number of complicated topics," he said, answering the question about what problems are preventing the establishment of peace between these countries.

As the Russian diplomat noted, the most important of them are the issues of ensuring the security of the Armenian population of Nagorno-Karabakh and protecting the rights accepted by all within the legal framework of Azerbaijan.

"This logic was accepted by the parties after the mutual approval of the 1991 Almaty declaration. An international support mechanism for the implementation of the [peace] treaty is also required, which would not question the sovereignty and political independence of Armenia and Azerbaijan," added Gonchar.

He emphasized that Russia provides active assistance to the two parties in the preparation of the peace treaty.

"The preparation of the Armenian-Azerbaijani peace treaty is one of the elements of the tripartite agreements between the President of Russia [Vladimir Putin], the President of Azerbaijan [Ilham Aliyev], and the Prime Minister of Armenia [Nikol Pashinyan]. The Russian side actively assists Baku and Yerevan in the preparation of that document, using political-diplomatic channels at all levels. Tripartite summits are held every year, the foreign ministers [of the three countries] meet all the time," said the director of the Fourth Department of the CIS Countries of the Russian foreign ministry.