Russian President Vladimir Putin negotiated a deal to end a 44-day war over the disputed Nagorno-Karabakh region after the Armenians, who were facing defeat at the hands of the Azerbaijani army, agreed to stop fighting and withdraw their forces.
Russia began deploying nearly 2,000 troops as peacekeepers on Tuesday under the agreement reached with Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan and Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev that will create the conditions “for a comprehensive and long-term settlement of the crisis in Nagorno- Karabakh, “Putin said in a televised statement.
Although not a signatory to the agreement, the agreement also represents a strategic triumph for Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, whose vocal support for Azerbaijan in the fight has allowed him to enter Russia’s Caucasus backyard. Aliyev said Turkish troops will join the Russian peacekeeping mission in a televised address to the nation early Tuesday.
The peace agreement also gives Erdogan potential overland access through southern Armenia to Azerbaijan and the resource-rich republics of Central Asia for the first time, even as Turkey rejects diplomatic ties with its Armenian neighbor and keeps its joint border.
The pact leaves the United States and France on the sidelines, allowing Putin and Erdogan to dominate talks on the terms of any future agreement between Armenia and Azerbaijan. Russia, France and the United States tried and failed for decades as international mediators to persuade the two sides to reach a peace agreement after Moscow brokered a truce in 1994 to stop a war that killed 30,000 and displaced 1 million. amid the collapse of the Soviet Union.
“We got what we wanted,” Aliyev said in his television speech, in which he mocked Pashinyan for accepting “capitulation” in the war. “We force” them to peace, he said.
“For Putin it is the best deal under the circumstances, given our reluctance and inability to fight the war on the side of Armenia,” said Vladimir Frolov, a former Russian diplomat who is now a foreign policy analyst in Moscow. “He maintains a functional relationship with Erdogan while avoiding a major fight.”
The pact provides for Armenians in Nagorno-Karabakh to have safe access to Armenia through a land corridor through Azerbaijani territory that will be guarded by Russian forces. It also allows people in the Azerbaijani enclave of Naxcivan, on the border with Turkey, to travel through southern Armenia to Azerbaijan, again with Russian security on the ground.
It was “an extremely difficult decision” to accept the deal to stop the war, Pashinyan said in a Facebook post. “I made that decision as a result of an in-depth analysis of the military situation,” he said, after Armenian officials acknowledged that they had lost control of a key city just 10 kilometers (6 miles) from the capital Nagorno-Karabakh, Stepanakert, for Azerbaijan.
“It is not a victory,” wrote Pashinyan. “But there is no defeat unless you consider yourself the loser.”
Protests erupted in the streets of the Armenian capital, Yerevan, after news of the deal broke. Protesters stormed parliament and angry crowds gathered in front of the government building and Pashinyan’s official residence, accusing him of betraying the country.
Armenian President Armen Sarkissian, who has a primarily ceremonial role, pointed to tensions with Pashinyan by saying that he had only learned of the deal through media reports. There was “no discussion of this document with me,” Sarkissian said in a statement calling for immediate political consultations “at this crucial moment in national preservation.”
The agreement to halt the fighting that broke out on September 27 sets a timetable for the Armenian withdrawal from the occupied Azerbaijani districts outside Nagorno-Karabakh in stages by December 1, effectively restoring Azerbaijan’s control of most of the territory that lost in the 1990s. It also provides for the exchange of prisoners and the return of refugees, saying nothing about the final state of the disputed enclave.
The deal came after Azerbaijani forces took control of the city of Shusha, which Armenians call Shushi, on Sunday, placing them on the outskirts of Stepanakert. The government there, backed by Armenia, had warned that the loss of Shushi would bring the entire region down.
“I don’t know what assessment history will give to this decision, but we were forced to make it,” Nagorno-Karabakh President Arayik Harutyunyan said, adding that Azerbaijani troops are 2-3 kilometers from Stepanakert.
The two sides have been fighting for more than six weeks over the enclave and seven surrounding regions taken over by Armenians in the 1990s, which are internationally recognized as part of Azerbaijan. More than 5,000 people have died in the latest conflict, according to Russian officials.
Azerbaijan said it fought to reestablish control over its territory. Armenia said it was defending Nagorno-Karabakh’s right to self-determination after its Armenian majority voted for independence.
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