On 27 October 2010, in Astrakhan, at the invitation of the President of the Russian Federation, the presidents of Azerbaijan, Armenia and the Russian Federation met and discussed in detail the course and prospects of a Nagorno-Karabakh settlement. The official Kremlin text is titled “Joint Statement of the Presidents of the Republic of Azerbaijan, the Republic of Armenia and the Russian Federation on the Nagorno-Karabakh settlement”. The signatories are Ilham Aliyev, Serzh Sargsyan and Dmitry Medvedev.

The presidents reaffirmed the provisions of the joint declaration signed in Moscow on 2 November 2008, at Meiendorf. Astrakhan does not replace that framework; it confirms it. The 2010 document remains a short political statement, not a numbered peace treaty.

They stressed that a settlement of the conflict by political and diplomatic means requires further efforts to strengthen the ceasefire regime and confidence-building measures in the military field. The wording ties the ceasefire to military confidence; it does not describe a line of contact and does not impose new observers.

To that end, the presidents of Azerbaijan and Armenia agreed, as a first step, to exchange prisoners of war without delay and to return the remains of the dead. Assistance is to come from the co-chairs of the OSCE Minsk Group and the International Committee of the Red Cross. The first step is humanitarian, not a status agreement on Nagorno-Karabakh.

The two sides also agreed to be guided by these approaches in future, given the exclusively humanitarian character of such questions. The text sets no treaty timetable, draws no borders and does not mention a referendum, peacekeepers or corridors.

The statement is not the five-party Caspian communiqué adopted in Baku on 18 November 2010 and does not settle the legal status of the Caspian Sea. Medvedev’s hope that general principles of settlement might be ready for the OSCE summit in Astana on 1–2 December was given to the press after the meeting; it is not in the joint statement.

Image: Astrakhan Kremlin, city of signature; Dasf3, 23 May 2015; CC BY-SA 4.0, Wikimedia Commons. Cropped to 16:9.

Source consulted: Astrakhan Declaration. Treaty text: Joint Statement of the Presidents of Azerbaijan, Armenia and the Russian Federation on the Nagorno-Karabakh settlement, 27 October 2010.