Russan President Vladimir Putin and his Azerbaijani counterpart Ilham Aliyev are holding a bilateral meeting on the sidelines of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization summit in Samarkand on Friday. Their conversation is taking place against a background of an aggravation of the situation on the Armenian-Azerbaijani border this week.
As Russian presidential spokesman Dmitry Peskov told reporters on Thursday, the escalation of border tensions, “of course, will top the agenda.”
Earlier, Putin discussed the state of affairs by telephone with Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan. An urgent meeting of the Council of the Collective Security Treaty Organization (CSTO) has been held online.