Outrage over bitter defeat in disputed ethnic region
MOSCOW — Russian peacekeeping forces were deployed to the disputed ethnic Armenian enclave of NagornoKarabakh on Tuesday after Armenia and Azerbaijan signed a Russianbrokered deal to end a sixweek war that had already killed thousands.
Some Armenians were furious that Nikol Pashinyan, the country’s prime minister, signed the accord, which cedes to Azerbaijan a broad swath of land and several key towns that had been effectively controlled by Armenia since 1994.
Opposition politicians called for Pashinyan’s resignation, while protesters broke into the parliament and beat its speaker, Ararat Mirzoyan, who required surgery. Protesters also stormed the prime minister’s office, where, Pashinyan said later, a computer and a wristwatch were stolen.
Amid the tumult Tuesday, Pashinyan posted on Facebook that he was in Armenia and continued to work as prime minister. The country’s leadership struggled to convince the public that it had no choice but to stop the fighting now, because Armenia had suffered steep losses of life and territory.
“We have once again proved that we have invincible soldiers, officers and generals who are ready to sacrifice their lives for the defense of our holy motherland without a second thought,” Armenia’s
Defense Ministry said. “But it is time to stop the bloodshed.”
Richard Giragosian, director of the Regional Studies Center in Yerevan, said there was a gathering sense of resignation among Armenians.
“There’s a general sense in the streets that we had no choice, that this was the best alternative to save what was left of NagornoKarabakh,” Giragosian said.
There was also pain: The lush mountains of NagornoKarabakh, known to Armenians as Artsakh, had long been part of a national and ethnic identity for Armenians around the world. The loss of that territory on Tuesday was already taking a place in the annals of tragedy in Armenian history, alongside the slaughter and expulsion of Armenians from Turkey a century ago in what most neutral historians call the century’s first genocide.