Delegations from the defense ministries of Armenia, Belarus, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Russia and Tajikistan are expected to participate in the CSTO defence ministers meeting taking place in the Armenian capital

The visit of Russian Defence Minister Sergei Shoigu to Baku on Sunday came only days after president Putin was himself in the Azerbaijani capital where he had several hours of discussions with president Aliev

The visit follows-up on discussions that Russian president Vladimir Putin had in Baku last week with Azerbaijani president Ilham Aliev.

Natig Jafarli is the second senior member of the "REAL Movement" to be imprisoned. Another REAL member, Ilgar Mammadov was arrested in February 2013 and remains in prison despite a finding by the European Court of Human Rights in his favor

EUSR Herbert Salber is currently visiting Azerbaijan as part of his mandate to maintain contact with the sides in the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict and support the international mediation for the peaceful resolution of the conflict

"I believe that both Armenia and Azerbaijan really want to find a way out of this situation in order to live in peace and harmony, to cooperate, and to grow their respective economies" - Putin

A blog with news and analysis of the summits of the leaders of Russia, Iran Turkey, Armenia and Azerbaijan from 7 - 10 August 2016

In introductory remarks before the meeting both Putin and Sargsyan hailed the the economic results of Armenia's first year of membership in the Eurasian Economic Union

The changes in the National Security Council are the latest in a series of purges of personnel in the military and security sector in Armenia and come hours before president Sargsyan leaves for Moscow to meet president Putin

Erdogan told Putin ""Our region has political expectations of Turkey and Russia".