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MOSCOW (Reuters) – Russian President Vladimir Putin told his Azerbaijani counterpart Ilham Aliyev on Saturday to take care of Christian shrines in parts of Nagorno-Karabakh that Azerbaijan has under the country’s ceasefire agreement. week, the Kremlin said.
Russia negotiated a ceasefire on Tuesday that secured territorial advances for Azerbaijan in the ethnic Armenian region, where Azerbaijani troops have been fighting ethnic Armenian forces for the past six weeks.
Putin told Aliyev that there were Christian churches and monasteries in areas of the enclave, internationally recognized as part of Azerbaijan but populated by ethnic Armenians, that Azerbaijan obtains under the ceasefire agreement.
“In this regard, he (Putin) stressed the importance of ensuring the safety and normal life of the church of these shrines,” the Kremlin said.
Aliyev said that this is how Azerbaijan will act, according to the Kremlin.
The main religion in Azerbaijan is Islam.
Putin, Aliyev and Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan also discussed “practical aspects” of the ceasefire, the Kremlin said. It was unclear if Putin had a call with Aliyev and then another call with Aliyev and Pashinyan, or if he spoke separately with the Armenian leader.
Under the agreement, 2,000 Russian peacekeepers are being deployed to the region.
Since the early 1990s, ethnic Armenians had had military control over all of Nagorno-Karabakh and substantial swaths of the surrounding Azerbaijani territory. Now they have lost much of the enclave itself, as well as the surrounding territory.
(Reporting by Andrey Ostroukh; Editing by Frances Kerry)
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