France’s Foreign Ministry said that Azerbaijan’s decision to release French national Martin Ryan “marks a step towards the normalisation of relations” between Azerbaijan and France, following decades of deep tensions between the two countries.
In a short statement released on Thursday through the French embassy in Baku, the day after pardoned Ryan left for Paris, as part of a wider deal to remove Uzbek-Russian oligarch Alisher Usmanov from the EU’s Russia sanctions list, the French foreign ministry said that “the decision (to pardon Ryan) is the result of a patient and demanding dialogue with Azerbaijan’s authorities which we intend to continue.”
