YEREVAN, December 26 /ARKA/. Russia has always supported the earliest possible resolution of the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict, Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova said at a briefing on Wednesday.

"We do not set a time frame. We have always advocated an early settlement and supported all the measures that are aimed at an early resolution of this problem. I will not speak about specific terms. The conflict has along history.  Unfortunately, this is a protracted conflict," Zakharova said.

According to her, everything that depends on the Russian side as a co-chair (of the OSCE Minsk Group), and as a country that has a common past and a common history with Azerbaijan and Armenia, will be done.

The Nagorno-Karabakh conflict erupted into armed clashes after the collapse of the Soviet Union in the early 1990s as the predominantly Armenian-populated enclave of Azerbaijan sought to secede from Azerbaijan and declared its independence backed by a successful referendum. 

On May 12, 1994, the Bishkek cease-fire agreement put an end to the military operations. A truce was brokered by Russia in 1994, although no permanent peace agreement has been signed. Since then, Nagorno-Karabakh and several adjacent regions have been under the control of Armenian forces of Karabakh. Nagorno-Karabakh is the longest-running post-Soviet era conflict and has continued to simmer despite the relative peace of the past two decades, with snipers causing tens of deaths a year. 

On April 2, 2016, Azerbaijan launched military assaults along the entire perimeter of its contact line with Nagorno-Karabakh. Four days later a cease-fire was reached. -0