YEREVAN: Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov cautioned Tuesday against "too much optimism" over a quick resolution of the simmering Armenian-Azerbaijani conflict involving the disputed Nagorny Karabakh region.
The ex-Soviet republics of Azerbaijan and Armenia have for decades been locked in a deadly conflict over Karabakh.
Frequent exchanges of fire along the volatile frontline nearly restarted a full-blown war last year.
Russia's top diplomat travelled to Baku and Yerevan on Monday and Tuesday respectively ahead of a planned meeting of his Armenian and Azerbaijani counterparts.
"Together with our American and French colleagues we will now analyse where we are right now, (and) we will try to take some sort of active steps to create conditions to achieve a settlement," Lavrov said.
"But I would not express too much optimism. The problem is challenging and our experience of negotiations makes us think they will not end soon," he added.
Together with France and the United States, Moscow co-chairs the so-called Minsk Group that operates under the aegis of the Organisation for Security and Cooperation in Europe to try to settle the Karabakh conflict.
In April last year, at least 110 people were killed in Karabakh from all sides as the simmering violence flared into the worst clashes in decades.
A Russian-brokered ceasefire ended the four days of fierce fighting.
Nagorny Karabakh has been under Armenian control since it was seized during a bloody conflict in the early 1990s after the break-up of the Soviet Union.
The two sides never signed a definitive peace deal and attempts to negotiate a final settlement have long been stalled.
Baku -- whose military spending exceeds impoverished Armenia's entire state budget -- has threatened to take back the breakaway region by force, while Russian-allied Armenia has vowed to crush any military offensive.
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