Moscow hopes a meeting in the "3+3" format will take place soon

Moscow hopes that a meeting of the consultative regional format "3+3" (Armenia, Azerbaijan, Georgia plus Russia, Iran, Turkey) will take place in the near future.

Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said this at the high-level plenary session of the fourth Minsk International Conference on Eurasian Security.

"The participants of this platform agreed to promote a unifying agenda. We hope that another meeting in this format will take place in the near future," Lavrov said.

Earlier, the Russian minister noted that the "3+3" format is comprehensive in nature and is not limited to any single project that is planned to be implemented outside the general regional context.

The six-party (Russia, Turkey, Iran, Azerbaijan, Armenia and Georgia) format of consultations on cooperation issues in the South Caucasus and the Middle East was proposed at the end of 2020 by the presidents of Azerbaijan and Turkey, Ilham Aliyev and Recep Tayyip Erdogan. Georgia has been repeatedly invited to participate in this format, but it has not yet joined its work. In December 2021, the first meeting of the platform at the level of deputy foreign ministers was held in Moscow. The second meeting of the format, which was also the first meeting at the level of foreign ministers, took place in October 2023 in Tehran. The most recent meeting in this format was held on October 18, 2024, in Istanbul.