In an interview with the news agency RIA Novosti on February 8, Pyotr Ilichev, the Director of the Department at the Russian Foreign Ministry, stated that sending UN forces to Nagorno-Karabakh is not a feasible option. 

He added that the Russian peacekeeping contingent deployed to the area after the Second Karabakh War in 2020 autumn has been effective in restoring peace and security in the region.

Ilichev said that of international and foreign organizations, only the International Committee of the Red Cross is allowed to work in Nagorno-Karabakh. The UN humanitarian agencies have not received permission from Azerbaijanis and Armenians to access the area, even for the primary needs assessment mission.

According to Ilichev, difficulties arise from the political unfeasibility of maintaining an equidistant position with the parties, including the modalities of entry and exit to the region, reporting, monitoring, and the legal basis for the construction of humanitarian activities. "In these conditions of no progress in establishing even international humanitarian assistance to Nagorno-Karabakh, the practical implementation of the idea of sending an international peacekeeping contingent, which, moreover, would require a UN Security Council sanction, is hardly realistic," Ilichev added.

"We assume that the Russian peacekeeping contingent is effectively coping with all the tasks to restore peace and security in Nagorno-Karabakh," he added. The Russian diplomat added that not always peacekeeping missions deployed under a UN Security Council mandate enjoy the trust of the host countries. "In some cases, the host countries favor the withdrawal of the Blue Helmets because of their low efficiency. Therefore, the question is not so much who authorizes the peacekeeping operation, but rather the goodwill of both parties to the conflict to end it and eliminate its consequences," Ilichev said.

He also said there was no need to give Russian peacekeepers in Nagorno-Karabakh a UN mandate, as both Baku and Yerevan agreed with the modalities of their work and supported it. "The Russian peacekeeping contingent remains the only guarantor of maintaining stability in the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict zone. There is no need to give it a mandate to the UN because the modalities of our peacekeepers are already clearly fixed in the first trilateral statement of the leaders of Russia, Azerbaijan, and Armenia of November 9, 2020. There is a consensus among the parties to the dispute on this issue, and this fact is of key importance in the conditions of uncertainty of the territory's final status," the Russian official concluded.