MOSCOW, 15 January 2022, (TON): According to a statement released by the Russian Foreign Ministry “Special Representative of Armenia to start a dialogue with Turkey Ruben Rubinyan and his Turkish counterpart Serdar Kilic, following the talks in Moscow, agreed to conduct a dialogue in a constructive and depoliticized manner in order to identify common ground.”

The ministry said “the parties have shown their readiness to conduct a dialogue in a constructive, non-politicized manner, in the spirit of openness and focus on practical results, moving in small steps from simple to complex and the economic prosperity of the region.”

The meeting was mediated by Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Andrei Rudenko.

He stressed “earlier on Friday, at a large press conference on the results of the activities of Russian diplomacy in 2021, the head of the Russian diplomatic service Sergei Lavrov said that Moscow welcomes the first meeting of the parties in the Russian capital.

“Our role is to help establish a direct dialogue, I hope it will be successful.”

Despite the common border, there are no diplomatic relations between Armenia and Turkey. In 2009, in Zurich, the foreign ministers of the two states signed protocols on the establishment of diplomatic relations and on the principles of relations, but these documents were not ratified by the parties.