MOSCOW

Russian President Vladimir Putin on Tuesday held separate phone talks with Algerian President Abdelmadjid Tebboune and Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan, the Kremlin said in a statement.

Putin and Tebboune "reaffirmed their readiness for further joint work on the global energy market, including within the OPEC Plus and the Gas Exporting Countries Forum."

Vladimir Putin also spoke to Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed Bin Salman on Monday, as ministers from the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC), and its allies known as OPEC+, are due to hold a virtual meeting on Wednesday.

With Pashinyan, Putin discussed the situation in the Karabakh region with the emphasis on the importance of "consistent implementation" of trilateral agreements for the Armenian-Azerbaijani normalization.

Relations between the two former Soviet republics have been tense since 1991 when Armenian military occupied Nagorno-Karabakh, a territory internationally recognized as part of Azerbaijan, and seven adjacent regions.

Most of the territory was liberated by Baku during a war in the fall of 2020, which ended after a Russian-brokered peace agreement and also opened the door to normalization.