Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan on Tuesday said Armenia was all set to sign a peace deal with Azerbaijan by the end of the year, and would pledge the security of all Azerbaijani citizens on its territory, Russia’s TASS news agency reported. Russian President Vladimir Putin previous week said he had a faith regarding a peace deal between Armenia and Azerbaijan was achievable if both sides revealed goodwill, playing down the toughness of reaching an agreement on their shared border.
Azerbaijan previous month mounted a lightning offensive to put halt on control of the breakaway area of Nagorno-Karabakh, which had been ruled by ethnic Armenians with Armenia’s support for three decades. Most of Karabakh’s 120,000 or so ethnic Armenians drove to Armenia.