If someone has failed the efforts of Armenian-Azerbaijani normalization, then the West, the format of the OSCE Minsk Group was sent to the garbage dump of history in February of last year. Maria Zakharova, the official representative of the Russian Foreign Ministry, announced this at Friday’s press briefing.

"At that time, the American and French co-chairs [of the Minsk Group] stopped the cooperation with the Russian colleague under a concocted pretext. A clear explanation was never given in this regard. Taking that into account, we [i.e., Russia] focused on providing assistance to Yerevan and Baku within the framework of tripartite formats, based on the complex of relevant high-level agreements," added Zakharova.

And reflecting on the subject of the US mediation, she noted that "you do not see that it contains real steps and has any added value."