A ferocious six-week war between Azerbaijan and Armenia over a disputed region in the southern Caucasus came to an abrupt end early Tuesday after the surprise announcement of a Russian-brokered peace deal, Independent reports in its article Fury and celebrations as Russia brokers peace deal to end Nagorno-Karabakh war.
The deal allows Azerbaijan to reclaim huge swaths of the mountainous Nagorno-Karabakh region and its surroundings that it lost to war in Armenia nearly three decades ago. It will be enforced by roughly 2,.000 Russian troops along the demarcation lines spelled out in an agreement signed by the Russian president, Vladimir Putin, Azerbaijani president, Ilham Aliyev, and Armenian prime minister, Nikol Pashinyan.
The deal represents a significant victory for Baku, which managed to make major battlefield gains in pursuit of ethnically Armenian territory that is internationally recognised as part of Azerbaijan. It came after Azerbaijan captured the city of Shusha, long considered the centrepiece of the ethnic Azeri presence in Nagorno-Karabakh.
“The capture of Shusha made an Azeri assault on the region’s capital, Stepanakert, all but inevitable, prompting Armenia to accept the humiliating ceasefire,” wrote James M Dorsey of the National University of Singapore’s Middle East Institute in an analysis.
It also amounts to yet another significant diplomatic win for the Kremlin, which has sought in recent years to rebuild its status as an indispensable global diplomatic power. But the accord is a defeat for Armenia and could possibly spell the end of the political career of Mr Pashinyan, who came to power in 2018 in a popular uprising. Hundreds of enraged protesters in Yerevan swarmed his official residence after word of the peace deal spread, attempting to storm through the front doors. In a post on Facebook, Mr Pashinyan described the decision to sign the deal as “hard” and “painful”, but rooted in battlefield calculations and consultation with experts.
Turkey, Baku’s primary backer, will also count the deal as a victory that bolsters its status in the region; Ankara has long pined for a seat along with Russia, the United States and France at the negotiation table over Nagorno-Karabakh.
Diplomats and human rights observers have voiced concern about the fate of ethnic Armenians who regard Nagorno-Karabakh as their home. Azerbaijan has repeatedly insisted it will protect them.
