31 Jan 2023; MEMO: Russian President, Vladimir Putin, on Tuesday, held separate phone talks with Algerian President, Abdelmadjid Tebboune, and Armenian Prime Minister, Nikol Pashinyan, the Kremlin said in a statement, Anadolu News Agency reports.
Putin and Tebboune "reaffirmed their readiness for further joint work on the global energy market, including within the OPEC plus and the Gas Exporting Countries Forum."
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Vladimir Putin also spoke to Saudi Crown Prince, Mohammed Bin Salman, on Monday, as ministers from the Organisation of the Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC), and its allies known as OPEC+, are due to hold a virtual meeting on Wednesday.
With Pashinyan, Putin discussed the situation in the Karabakh region, with the emphasis on the importance of "consistent implementation" of trilateral agreements for the Armenian-Azerbaijani normalisation.
Relations between the two former Soviet republics have been tense since 1991, when Armenian military occupied Nagorno-Karabakh, a territory internationally recognised as part of Azerbaijan, and seven adjacent regions.
Most of the territory was liberated by Baku during a war in the fall of 2020, which ended after a Russian-brokered peace agreement and also opened the door to normalisation.