The Russian Foreign Ministry has dismissed the claims of former US Co-Chair of the OSCE Minsk Group Richard Hoagland that even if the Armenian and Azerbaijani sides agreed on Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov's ideas on the settlement of the Nagorno-Karabakh (Artsakh) conflict, the Russian side will not implement them.

"It does not correspond at all. Russia has always been ready for a solution alternative which the parties to the conflict would support. The President of the Russian Federation has said this many times. This position is decisive in the work of the Russian co-chairmanship [in the OSCE Minsk Group].

I'm not going to guess what led Richard Hoagland to make such claims. I would like to emphasize that the package of settlement proposals, in addition to the declaration of the leaders of Azerbaijan and Armenia, also included a joint statement by Russia, the United States, and France in support of it. These two documents, plus the UN Security Council resolution approving the package of proposals for the settlement of the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict, were the essence of the Russian proposals at the time, of which the other [OSCE Minsk Group] co-chairs—the United States and France—were aware in detail, and they fully supported them," the Russian Foreign Ministry said.