Russian Defence Minister Sergei Shoigu held telephone conversations with Azerbaijani Defense Minister Zakir Hasanov and Defense Minister of Armenia Davit Tonoyan, the Russian Defence Ministry said on Wednesday.
Shoigu urged his counterparts from Armenia and Azerbaijan to observe a ceasefire in the Nagorno-Karabakh region.
At the talks held at Russia’s initiative in Moscow, Baku and Yerevan agreed on a humanitarian ceasefire, which came into effect at 12:00 local time (11:00 Moscow time) on October 10 in order to exchange detainees and the bodies of those killed in the fighting.
The Armenian armed forces committed a large-scale provocation, subjecting the positions of the Azerbaijani army to intensive shelling from large-caliber weapons, mortars, and artillery installations of various calibers in the front-line zone on Sept. 27 at 05:00 (Msk). The command of the Azerbaijani Army decided to launch a counter-offensive operation of Azerbaijani troops along the entire front to suppress the combat activity of the Armenian armed forces and ensure the safety of the civilian population. To date, the city of Jabrayil and most of the Jabrayil district, the city of Hadrut, more than half of the Fizuli district were liberated in the south, and the strategically important Murovdag mountain and the so-called sixth fortified area around the village of Sugovushan in the north were liberated.
