MOSCOW, April 18 (RIA Novosti) – Armenian President Serzh Sargsyan will visit Russia next Thursday, the Kremlin press service announced on Saturday.
Kremlin aide Sergei Prikhodko said on Friday that Sargsyan would come for a working visit next week, but could only say it was “tentatively” scheduled for April 23.
The visit is at the invitation of President Dmitry Medvedev, who on Friday met with Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev.
After the talks, Aliyev thanked Russia for its efforts to forge a common position on a settlement to the Nagorny Karabakh problem.
Nagorny Karabakh, a region in Azerbaijan with a largely Armenian population, declared its independence from Azerbaijan in 1983. The ensuing Armenian-Azerbaijani conflict claimed some 35,000 lives. A ceasefire was signed in 1994. The area technically remains part of Azerbaijan, but has its own government and is de facto independent.
Medvedev brought the Azerbaijani and Armenian presidents together in Moscow in November 2008 in an attempt to jump-start stalled negotiations on the region. Aliyev and Sargsyan followed up that meeting with hour-long one-on-one talks in Switzerland in late January.