Putin hosts leaders of rivals Armenia, Azerbaijan, for talks

By DASHA LITVINOVA
Associated Press

MOSCOW (AP) — Russian President Vladimir Putin is hosting the leaders of Armenia and Azerbaijan for talks. The meetings mark a one-year anniversary of a Moscow-brokered peace deal that ended fighting in the separatist region of Nagorno-Karabakh. Armenia and Azerbaijan have been locked in a decades-old dispute over Nagorno-Karabakh, a region that lies within Azerbaijan but was under the control of ethnic Armenian forces backed by Armenia since a separatist war there ended in 1994. The Azerbaijani military routed the Armenian forces in 44 days of fighting in the fall of 2020, which ended with a Russia-brokered peace deal.