On 2 December, Russia’s President Vladimir Putin praised Armenia’s Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan for signing the trilateral agreement on Nagorno-Karabakh, adding that Russia and Collective Security Treaty Organization (CSTO) Member States should help Armenia in implementing the agreement.

“Armenia and the Armenian people have endured a really difficult period in their history. I must say that those decisions were painful but, I repeat, necessary, and their adoption required the Armenian prime minister’s personal courage. This is obvious, and each of us participating in this meeting understands the extent of responsibility needed for making such decisions and Pashinyan took that responsibility,” Putin stated.

As for Pashinyan, he stated that Russia is the guarantor of the preservation of peace and security in the region. He added that he is working very closely with the Russian president to solve such problems as the search for the missing, the exchange of prisoners of war and other captives and the recovery of the bodies of the killed soldiers. “First of all, it is the issue of prisoners of war, captives, other arrested people, the issue of exchanging bodies of the killed and revealing the fate of the missing. These are urgent issues. The Armenian side is ready to intensify actions to accelerate the process and increase the efficiency of its implementation. It is necessary to exclude the cases of violence and humiliation of dignity of prisoners of war, of the arrested,” Pashinyan stressed. 

Pashinyan also said that it is a necessity to create conditions for the return of Armenian people to Karabakh and restoration of their normal life, adding that steps are necessary to protect the cultural and religious monuments of the Armenian people in the Azerbaijani controlled territories in Karabakh. 

The Armenian government amended the decree on martial law, which has been in effect in the country since 27 September. The ban on rallies was removed, as well as special entry and exit regime and the restrictions on media publications were lifted.