Assistant to the President of Azerbaijan Hikmet Hajiyev said that the OSCE Minsk Group is a thing of the past.

The Karabakh issue is closed. Azerbaijanis and Karabakh Armenians are citizens of the same country who can peacefully coexist with each other. This was stated by the head of the foreign policy department of the presidential administration, Hikmet Hajiyev.

According to him, the US and France, being co-chairs of the OSCE Minsk Group, did not make any contribution to the peaceful settlement of the Karabakh problem, and the ambassadors of these countries refused to visit Shusha, despite repeated invitations. Such behavior, according to the assistant to the president of the country, can be regarded as their non-recognition of the territorial integrity of Azerbaijan.

“I have a message to those who are trying to appeal to the Minsk Group as a mediator in resolving existing issues: this group does not exist , just as there is no such international problem that requires mediators,” Hajiyev was quoted by the Azerbaijani media.

The assistant to the President of Azerbaijan also noted that during the Second Karabakh War in 2020, the Azerbaijani army was very close to the liberation of Khankendi, but did not began to do this in order to avoid civilian casualties.

In September 2020, the long-term conflict between Azerbaijan and Armenia escalated in Nagorno-Karabakh. Fighting began in Karabakh. The situation relatively normalized in autumn 2021, however, Armenia and Azerbaijan continued to report incidents at the border.