Azerbaijan, Armenia call halt to hostilities
MOSCOW — The leaders of Armenia and Azerbaijan have agreed to end “all military actions” in the disputed NagornoKarabakh region, Russian media cited the Kremlin as saying early Tuesday.
The agreement signed by Azerbaijan’s President Ilham Aliyev, Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan and Russian President Vladimir Putin will also see the deployment of Russian peacekeepers to the region, according to the news agency TASS.
Speaking on television after the statement was released, Putin said they believed it would create the “necessary conditions for a long-term and full-fledged settlement of the crisis around NagornoKarabakh on a fair basis.”
More than 1,000 people have been killed and tens of thousands more displaced in the conflict, which flared up in September. It is the deadliest bout of fighting since the two countries fought a war over the region in the late 1980s and early 1990s.
Putin also said that the two sides were already engaged in the exchange of prisoners of war and bodies, and that refugees would return to the region under the care of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees.
The truce, which comes after the failure of three previous cease-fire attempts, was due to come into effect at 1 a.m. local time on Tuesday. The armed forces of each side are to remain in their current positions.
Demonstrators protesting against the announcement in the Armenian capital Yerevan broke through a cordon and stormed into a government building, TASS reported.
In a Facebook post, Pashinyan said the decision to sign the agreement had been “very hard” and “inexpressibly sensitive for me personally and for our people.”
“I made the decision after a deep analysis of the military situation and the assessment by people who know it better than anyone,” he added.