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Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova has reflected on the joint statement of the OSCE Minsk Group and the Armenian and Azerbaijani foreign ministers after the December 5 meeting in Milan, as well as the conversation between the Armenian acting prime minister and Azerbaijani president on the side ines of the CIS informal summit in St. Petersburg.

Speaking at a weekly briefing on Thursday, Zakharova agreed that there is a dialogue between the parties to the conflict. “Of course, there is a dialogue. We don’t need to make any official statement on this topic, since the adoption of statements and contacts are obvious,” she said.

According to the Russian official, as a co-chair of the Minsk Group, Russia will ‘actively promote the positive dynamics aimed at achieving the main goal’ in the Nagorno-Karabakh (Artsakh) conflict.

Commenting on a recent statement of the OSCE mediators, Armenia and Azerbaijan on taking ‘concrete measures’ to prepare their populations for peace, Zakharova said that it may refer to a whole range of concrete steps that the parties, with the support of the co-chairs, will have to work out, and promised to clarify whether there is any specific list of steps or its elaboration hasn’t started yet.