Our main message is that, nevertheless, it is necessary to meet immediately with the military and agree on the same ceasefire monitoring mechanism which is mentioned in the OSCE Minsk Group document which no one has even started discussing yet. Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said this in an interview with Russian media.

He said that in a telephone conversation with Azerbaijani Jeyhun Bayramov on Wednesday, he reaffirmed Russia's message to the parties to the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict on the need for an immediate agreement on a ceasefire monitoring by the military.

"Our main message is that, nevertheless, it is necessary to meet immediately with the military and agree on the same ceasefire monitoring mechanism which is mentioned in the OSCE Minsk Group document which no one has even started discussing yet," Lavrov said. “I reaffirmed the corresponding signals exactly half an hour ago when the Foreign Minister of Azerbaijan had called me. We send the same signal to our Armenian colleagues. I believe this is the key to a lasting ceasefire now, from which civilian facilities and civilians suffer.

The Russian Federation does not rule out that Russian military observers may be involved in the mechanism of monitoring the ceasefire in Nagorno-Karabakh. "Even now, not peacekeepers [should participate in the verification mechanism], but military observers; their number would be enough. We believe it would be quite right if they were our military observers, but the last word should be of the parties [to the Karabakh conflict]. Of course, we assume that our allied relations, strategic partnership relations will be taken into account both in Yerevan and Baku," the Russian FM said.

According to him, the mechanism of monitoring over the observance of the ceasefire regime should start working on the actual line of contact between the Armenian and Azerbaijani armed forces in the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict zone.