Warring sides reach deal with Russia on Nagorno- Karabakh

Armenia cedes land to Azerbaijan. Moscow is to send peacekeepers.

YEREVAN, Armenia — Armenia and Azerbaijan announced an agreement early Tuesday to halt fighting over the Nagorno- Karabakh region of Azerbaijan under a pact signed with Russia that calls for deployment of nearly 2,000 Russian peacekeepers and territorial concessions.

Nagorno- Karabakh has been under the control of ethnic Armenian forces backed by Armenia since a 1994 truce ended a separatist war that cost an an estimated 30,000 lives. Sporadic clashes have occurred since then, and full- scale f ighting began on Sept. 27.

Several cease- f ires had been called but were almost immediately violated. However, the agreement announced early Tuesday appeared more likely to take hold because Azerbaijan has made significant advances, including taking control of the strategically key city of Shushi on Sunday.

Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinian said on Facebook that calling an end to the f ight was “extremely painful for me personally and for our people.”

Soon after the announcement, thousands of people streamed to the main square in the Armenian capital, Yerevan, to protest the agreement, many shouting, “We won’t give up our land!” Some of them broke into the main government building, saying they were searching for Pashinian, who apparently had already departed.

The agreement calls for Armenian forces to turn over control of some areas it held outside the borders of Nagorno- Karabakh, including the eastern district of Agdam. That area carries strong symbolic weight for Azerbaijan because its main city, also called Agdam, was thoroughly pillaged, and the only building still intact is the city’s mosque. Armenians will also turn over the Lachin region, which includes the main road leading from Nagorno- Karabakh to Armenia. The agreement calls for the road, the socalled Lachin Corridor, to remain open and be protected by Russian peacekeepers.

In all, 1,960 Russian peacekeepers are to be deployed in the region under a five- year mandate.

The agreement also calls for transportation links to be established through Armenia linking Azerbaijan and its western exclave of Nakhchivan, which is surrounded by Armenia, Iran and Turkey.

The seizure of Shushi, which Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev claimed Sunday and was confirmed Monday by Nagorno- Karabakh’s presidential spokesman, gave Azerbaijan a significant strategic advantage. The city is positioned on heights overlooking the regional capital of Stepanakert, six miles to the north.

“Unfortunately, we are forced to admit that a series of failures still haunt us, and the city of Shushi is completely out of our control,” Vagram Pogosian, a presidential spokesman for the government in NagornoKarabakh, said on Facebook. “The enemy is on the outskirts of Stepanakert.”

After the 1994 end of the previous war, mediation efforts faltered, and the region was separated from the rest of Azerbaijan by a demilitarized zone.