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The negotiations between Yerevan and Baku address the “technicalities of Artsakh's handover” to Azerbaijan, political analyst Suren Sargsyan said on Friday, referring to Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov’s latest remarks.

“It's clear that the Armenian-Azerbaijani talks focus on the technicalities of Artsakh's surrender, isn’t it?” he wrote on Facebook.

Earlier on Thursday, Lavrov suggested that the Alma-Ata Declaration of 1991, which the Armenian and Azerbaijani leaders confirmed their commitment to in a joint statement following their talks hosted by European Council President Charles Michel in Prague on October 6, shows that “the Nagorno-Karabakh Autonomous Oblast was clearly part of the Azerbaijani Soviet Socialist Republic.”

Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan and Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev reiterated their commitment to it in another joint statement issued after talks with Russian President Vladimir Putin in Sochi in late October.

“When they [the Armenian and Azeri leaders] came to Sochi, they brought from Prague a document in which they said they want to sign a peace treaty based on the UN Charter and the 1991Alma-Ata Declaration,” Lavrov said.

“The Alma-Ata Declaration states that all union republics form the Union of Independent States and confirms the inviolability of borders between the former union countries of the USSR. In other words, at that time, the Nagorno-Karabakh Autonomous Oblast was clearly part of the Azerbaijani SSR. This was confirmed by Azerbaijan, Armenia, France, and Mr. Michel without any reservations, which determines how to address the issue of Karabakh’s status,” he stated.