Russian capital will be hosting a new round of Nagorno-Karabakh negotiations. But this time the participants are not the presidents and foreign ministers, nor even the OSCE Minsk Group co-chairs. This time the problem will be addressed by the spiritual leaders of Azerbaijan and Armenia.

Ambassador Tacan İldem, currently serving as the permanent representative of Turkey to the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE), is expected to be shortly appointed as NATO’s Assistant Secretary General for Public Diplomacy, while international career diplomat Burcu San, has already been appointed as the director of the Operations Division of NATO’s International Secretariat.

After weeks of defying international pleas to free eight European officials they had captured in May, pro-Russian rebels in east Ukraine released them unexpectedly in June following a public appeal by the head of the Russian Orthodox Church, Patriarch Kirill.