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Ulviyya Poladova

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Azerbaijani Foreign Ministry spokesperson Ayhan Hajizada said that Russia-Armenia issues should no longer be discussed in a way that links them to Azerbaijan, AzerNEWS reports.

Hajizada made the remarks in response to a question from local media regarding comments by Maria Zakharova, spokesperson for the Russian Foreign Ministry, on the Karabakh region and the Collective Security Treaty Organization (CSTO).

According to Hajizada, Zakharova's latest remarks concerning the former Armenia-Azerbaijan conflict distort reality.

"The Karabakh region has always been recognized by the international community, including the Russian Federation, as an integral part of Azerbaijan," Hajizada noted.

He stressed that attempts to repeatedly raise the issue of applying CSTO mechanisms to Azerbaijan's sovereign territories that had been under Armenian occupation for 30 years, and to link this issue to whether the Karabakh region was recognized or not by Armenia, are not only contrary to Russia's official position regarding Azerbaijan's Karabakh region but are also completely unfounded.

"Azerbaijan restored its territorial integrity and sovereignty in accordance with the requirements of international law, thereby resolving the former conflict. In this context, the practice of commenting on issues related to Russia-Armenia relations in connection with Azerbaijan should come to an end," the Azerbaijani Foreign Ministry spokesperson emphasized.

On July 27, Russian Foreign Ministry spokesperson Maria Zakharova, speaking at the Gvardeysk youth forum, said that although Armenia had called for the CSTO mechanism to be used, questions remained over who and what it would be applied to.

Zakharova argued that the CSTO's collective security mechanism could not have been used because "Nagorno-Karabakh" was not recognized by Armenia either as its own territory or as an independent entity.