In the past year, the two leaders have held two meetings – one hosted by Kremlin leader Vladimir Putin the other by the European Union – and have made progress towards clinching an agreement a little more than a year after the “Second Karabakh War” in which Azerbaijan restored control over swathes of territory held by Armenians for three decades.

Ukraine was bracing for an intensification of Russian activity in the eastern Donbas region after Russian suggestions that it intended to concentrate its efforts on “liberating” those Russian-speaking areas in the east of the country.