Home › World › Armenia turns to the Minsk Group for talks
Armenia turns to the Minsk Group for talks
Summary
On 14 March 2022, Yerevan asked a mediation body to help launch peace talks with Baku, while Ukraine's war reports continued.
What did Armenia want from international mediators on 14 March 2022? According to reports from that day, Armenian Foreign Minister Ararat Mirzoyan asked the OSCE Minsk Group to help initiate peace talks with Azerbaijan. The aim was to normalise relations following the conflict.
The request was framed within the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict and the 2021–2022 Armenia–Azerbaijan border crisis. By turning to the Minsk Group, Yerevan chose a multilateral channel for its approach to Baku rather than announcing a bilateral initiative.
The war in Ukraine in the background
The request came on day 19 of Russia's full-scale invasion of Ukraine. A day earlier, on 13 March 2022, Ukraine's foreign minister, Dmytro Kuleba, said that Russian forces had abducted Yevhen Matviyev, the mayor of Dniprorudne. The reports gave no further detail on the circumstances.
The two items came from different parts of the region and concerned different disputes. Taken together, they show that diplomacy and military pressure were both in play on the eve of this date: one government was seeking talks through an established mediation format, while another was reporting the seizure of a local official by an occupying force.
What the reports do not show is any response from Azerbaijan or the Minsk Group on 14 March 2022. The request remained just that on the day: a stated Armenian wish to begin negotiations.
