BAKU: Russian President Vladimir Putin said on a visit to Baku Monday that Moscow was still committed to its historic role of mediating peace negotiations between Azerbaijan and Armenia, despite its Ukraine campaign.
Putin was in Azerbaijan on a two-day visit — his first to the oil-rich country since Moscow invaded Ukraine in 2022, and since Baku retook the Nagorno-Karabakh enclave in a September 2023 offensive.
Russia has for decades been a traditional mediator between the Caucasus foes but has in the last two years been bogged down by its Ukraine campaign, with Western powers playing an increasing role in arbitrating the conflict.
“It is widely known that Russia is also facing crises, first of all on the Ukrainian track,” Putin said in Baku in joint remarks with Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev.
“However, Russia’s historical involvement in the events in the South Caucasus, even during the recent years, makes it necessary for us to participate where needed by the sides, without a doubt.”
Baku’s campaign ended three decades of Armenian separatist rule and soured relations between Yerevan and its traditional ally Moscow, with Armenia accusing Russia of inaction and strengthening its ties with Western countries since.
“If we can do something to sign a peace agreement between Azerbaijan and Armenia... we will be very happy to,” Putin said.
The Russian leader said that after his Baku visit he will contact Armenia’s Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan to “tell him about the results of our negotiations.”
Aliyev said the security of the region largely depended on the close cooperation between Azerbaijan and Russia.
“The new situation (since September last year) opens up new opportunities for establishing a lasting peace in the South Caucasus,” he said.
When Baku recaptured Karabakh in a swift offensive last September, it led to the exodus of the mountainous enclave’s entire ethnic Armenian population — more than 100,000 people.
Putin in Baku offers to mediate Azerbaijan-Armenia peace deal
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Putin in Baku offers to mediate Azerbaijan-Armenia peace deal
- Russia has for decades been a traditional mediator between the Caucasus foes but has in the last two years been bogged down by its Ukraine campaign
Russia strikes power plant, kills four in Ukraine barrage
KHARKIV: Russia battered Ukraine with more than two dozen missiles and hundreds of drones early Tuesday, killing four people and pummelling another power plant, piling more pressure on Ukraine’s brittle energy system.
An AFP journalist in the eastern Kharkiv region, where four people were killed, saw firefighters battling a fire at a postal hub and rescue workers helping survivors by lamp light in freezing temperatures.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said “several hundred thousand” households near Kyiv were without power after the strikes, and again called on allies to bolster his country’s air defense systems.
“The world can respond to this Russian terror with new assistance packages for Ukraine,” President Volodymyr Zelensky wrote on social media.
“Russia must come to learn that cold will not help it win the war,” he added.
Authorities in Kyiv and the surrounding region rolled out emergency power cuts in the hours after the attack, saying freezing temperatures were complicating their work.
DTEK, Ukraine’s largest energy provider, said Russian forces had struck one of its power plants, saying it was the eighth such attack since October.
The operator did not reveal which of its plants was struck, but said Russia had attacked its power plants over 220 times since Moscow invaded Ukraine in 2022.
Daily attacks
Moscow has pummelled Ukraine with daily drone and missile barrages in recent months, targeting energy infrastructure and cutting power and heating in the frigid height of winter.
The Ukrainian air force said that Tuesday’s bombardment included 25 missiles and 247 drones.
The Kharkiv governor gave the death toll and added that six people were wounded in the overnight hit outside the region’s main city, also called Kharkiv.
White helmeted emergency workers could be seen clambering through the still-smoking wreckage of a building occupied by postal company Nova Poshta, in a video posted by the regional prosecutor’s office.
Within Ukraine’s second city, Kharkiv Mayor Igor Terekhov said a Russian long-range drone struck a medical facility for children, causing a fire. No casualties were reported.
The overnight strikes hit other regions as well, including southern city Odesa.
Residential buildings, a hospital and a kindergarten were damaged, with at least five people wounded in two waves of attacks, regional governor Sergiy Lysak said.
Russia’s use last week of a nuclear-capable Oreshnik ballistic missile on Ukraine sparked condemnation from Kyiv’s allies, including Washington, which called it a “dangerous and inexplicable escalation of this war.”
Moscow on Monday said the missile hit an aviation repair factory in the Lviv region and that it was fired in response to Ukraine’s attempt to strike one of Russian President Vladimir Putin’s residences — a claim Kyiv denies and that Washington has said it does not believe happened.
