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By Trend

Russia and Azerbaijan are among the most important players in the region, Russian political analyst at the Center for Political Information Ivan Pyatibratov told Trend.

He was commenting on the recent meeting of the presidents of Azerbaijan and Russia as part of the plenary session of the XVI annual meeting of the Valdai Discussion Club.

The Russian expert noted the importance of the fact that the two countries maintain friendly relations over the years and are strategic partners in the region.

The fact that Azerbaijan and Russia maintain good neighborly relations, as President Ilham Aliyev described them, means a lot, the Russian expert said.

“The fact that this year Eastern and Middle Eastern topics prevailed at the Valdai Discussion Club doesn’t mean that Russia is making a reversal from the West to the East, but rather that Russia’s policy is of multi-vector nature, and it has large-scale projects literally in all directions,” he noted. “At the same time, such an agenda suggests that the problems and prospects of the East are currently the most relevant ones.”

“On the one hand, we are witnessing a great number of conflicts of varying severity - in Syria, in Nagorno-Karabakh, US-Iran, and they all need to be resolved,” he added. “Vladimir Putin during the plenary session paid much attention to success in the fight against global terrorism and the settlement of the situation in Syria. Ilham Aliyev, in turn, raised the problem of Armenia-Azerbaijan Nagorno-Karabakh conflict and noted the political impotence of the UN Security Council in its settlement.”

“In this field our countries are coming closer together, since a strong referee is needed to resolve the territorial dispute between Azerbaijan and Armenia peacefully, whose role Western institutions like the UN play poorly,” the expert said. “On the other hand, the importance of the region from the economic and political points of view cannot be denied.”

He mentioned the North-South project, which involves a number of countries, including Russia, Azerbaijan and Iran. The Southern Gas Corridor (SGC), the Chinese mega-project “One Belt One Road” - these are only two projects that are being implemented in the East and, in essence, are changing the landscape of modern geopolitics, he said.

“All of these projects, in one way or another, are connected with Azerbaijan, which increases its role as a mediator of Middle Eastern relations,” the expert noted. “I believe that during a closed meeting in Sochi, the presidents of Russia and Azerbaijan discussed the possibility of further development of relations between our countries and their place in the new Big Game.”

On October 3 Russia’s Sochi city hosted an informal meeting of the heads of state with participants of the XVI annual meeting of the Valdai Discussion Club.

As part of the visit by Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev to Russia, his personal meeting with Russian leader Vladimir Putin took place, during which topical issues of a regional nature were discussed.

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