Russian Foreign Ministry Building.

MOSCOW (TASS News Agency) — The Russian Foreign Ministry will study the inquiry of Russian parliamentarians on denouncing the Moscow Treaty of Friendship and Brotherhood with Turkey signed on March 16, 1921, Russian Foreign Ministry spokesperson Maria Zakharova told a press briefing on Wednesday.

“Indeed, the Russian Foreign Ministry has received a query from State Duma members proposing to denounce the treaty,” Zakharova said answering a question from an Azerbaijani journalist on the impact of the proposed move on Russia’s relations with this country, since Azerbaijan’s interests are affected in the treaty as well. “I can tell you that at this stage the query should be studied, what exactly is proposed. All this will be done in accordance with the established procedure. Meanwhile, we need to study this initiative.”

Zakharova added that Russia is “developing relations with Azerbaijan and will not do anything that could worsen them. On the contrary, we will focus on what could improve our relations with this country.” “We have a lot of things in common, in all areas,” she said.

Members of Russia’s State Duma (lower house of parliament) Valery Rashkin and Sergei Obukhov (Communist Party faction) have sent a letter earlier this month to the country’s leadership and the Foreign Ministry proposing to denounce the Moscow Treaty of Friendship and Brotherhood signed on March 16, 1921, by the government of Soviet Russia (RSFSR) and the Grand National Assembly of Turkey, Russia’s Izvestia daily wrote.

“We should consider a possibility of legal review of all Russian-Turkish agreements that are unfavorable for our country and its allies. Ankara must understand what the escalation of the conflict could be fraught with for it. Only this can bring it to earth and prevent it from carrying out new provocations,” Obukhov told Izvestia. He noted that “two of the three Transcaucasian republics – Georgia and Armenia – did not recognize the terms of the treaty considering it unfair.”

Under the treaty “the former Kars region and the southern part of the former Batumi region that were part of the Russian Empire since 1878 as well as former Surmalin district of Erivan Governorate that was part of the Russian Empire since 1828 with Mount Ararat were ceded to Turkey.”