No breakthrough in Armenia, Azerbaijan peace talks in Russia

MOSCOW (AP) — Russian President Vladimir Putin has hosted Armenia and Azerbaijan’s leaders to try to broker a settlement to a longstanding conflict between the two ex-Soviet neighbors but announced no breakthrough. After meetings Monday with Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan and Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev in a Black Sea resort city, Putin said they had to remove points of disagreement from a prepared statement. That statement was to have formed the basis of a peace deal. Putin called the meetings “very useful,” without detailing what was and what wasn’t achieved. He said only that they agreed to continue contacts to seek solutions. Armenia and Azerbaijan have been locked in a decades-old conflict over a region called Nagorno-Karabakh.