Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev and Russian President Vladimir Putin held an unannounced meeting in Sochi on July 21, according to RIA Novosti press agency. The two heads of state reportedly discussed bilateral relations and the conflict between Azerbaijan and Armenia over the breakaway region of Nagorno-Karabakh, the report said without elaborating.

The meeting took place amidst an increase in violence at the border between Azerbaijan and Nagorno-Karabakh in recent months. According to the Azerbaijani defence ministry, Nagorno-Karabkh forces have violated a 1994 ceasefire agreement 20,000 times since January by shooting at its positions. Meanwhile, the defence ministry of the breakaway region reported that Azerbaijani forces have fired at its positions 121,000 times since January and have made thwarted attempts to cross the border. On February 25, five Azerbaijani soldiers died in such an attempt, the ministry said.

Azerbaijan and Armenia fought a bitter war over Nagorno-Karabakh in the early 1990s, which ended with a ceasefire agreement, but not a settlement, in 1994. The region is internationally recognised as part of Azerbaijan, though it is populated by ethnic Armenians. Baku has been increasingly restless with the status quo, whereby Nagorno-Karabakh operates as a de facto autonomous region with strong support from Armenia.

Since 2016, violence at the border has become more commonplace. In April that year, a three-day war resulted in 200 casualties on both sides and Azerbaijan recapturing a narrow portion of the territory of Nagorno-Karabakh.

Observers believe that Azerbaijan wants to thus put pressure on the internationally mediated peace negotiations, which have not progressed at all in the last two decades, to seek a resolution to the conflict.