The situation in the South Caucasus is something that Secretary Antony Blinken and the Department of State continue to be deeply engaged on, Principal Deputy Spokesperson Vedant Patel said at a daily briefing.
He was asked to comment on the Armenian POWs and politicians from Nagorno-Karabakh held in the prisons of Azerbaijan. The topic was brought up after the West and Russia conducted a major prisoner swap on Thursday.
“I don’t have any updates for you as it relates to that process. And look, when it comes to detainees, we have been clear and consistent that any country needs to treat all detainees humanely, with dignity, and in accordance with international law, and needs to respect detainees’ human rights, and that continues to be true in this case as well,” Patel said.
The US State Department has called the withdrawal of Russian border guards from Zvartnots International Airport of Yerevan "a welcome step."
Vedant Patel, Principal Deputy Spokesperson of the US Department of State, noted that they had commented on this matter a year ago, responding to a request to assess the process of withdrawal of the Russian border guards in Armenia.
"It was of course a concerning development then. I don’t have any additional details behind this development; I’m happy to look into it. But certainly would be a welcome step in the right direction,” Patel said at Thursday’s State Department
press briefing.
