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Image posted, EPA
The peace agreement came after negotiations in Moscow, and Russia will conduct military patrols on the battle lines.
Armenia, Azerbaijan and Russia signed a peace agreement to end the military conflict in the Nagorno-Karabakh region, which is disputed between Armenia and Azerbaijan.
The agreement will take effect on Tuesday from 1 am local time, in the hope that it will end six weeks of bloody fighting between the two neighboring countries.
The inhabitants of the region want to separate with the support of Armenia, which has run it since 1994, despite international recognition that it belongs to Azerbaijan.
Several ceasefire agreements between the two sides have failed since the outbreak of the fighting, which has continued unabated.
Armenians have lost parts of the region since the beginning of the recent conflict, and over the weekend Azerbaijani forces took control of the region’s second-largest city, Shusha.
Azerbaijan admitted that it mistakenly shot down a Russian military helicopter over Armenia, killing two of its crew and wounding a third.
Armenia is likely to give up more territory around Nagorno-Karabakh, under the recent peace agreement, in exchange for retaining the land it still has within.
In an Internet televised speech, Russian President Vladimir Putin said Russian peacekeepers would be deployed to patrol the front lines.
Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev, who joined President Putin, described the agreement as a “(turning point) to resolve the conflict,” according to the Reuters news agency.
But in a social media post of the meeting, Armenian Prime Minister Pashinyan said the deal was “very painful for me and all of our people.”
He added that his decision was based on “in-depth analysis of the combat situation and discussion with the best experts in the field.”
“This is not a victory, because there is no defeat unless one considers himself defeated,” the Armenian prime minister said.
