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Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan has signed a “painful” agreement with the leaders of Azerbaijan and Russia to end the military conflict over the disputed Nagorno-Karabakh region after more than a month of bloodshed.
Tuesday morning’s statement follows six weeks of heavy fighting in which Azerbaijani forces steadily advanced towards the enclave. Officials in Baku, the Azerbaijani capital, said on Monday they had seized dozens more settlements in Nagorno-Karabakh, a day after proclaiming victory in the battle for the enclave’s second-largest strategically located city, Shusha.
“I made that decision based on in-depth analysis of the combat situation and a discussion with the best experts in the field,” Pashinyan said on social media early Tuesday morning.
“This is not a victory, but there is no defeat until you consider yourself defeated. We will never consider ourselves defeated and this will become a new beginning of an era of our national unity and rebirth. “
Questions and answers
Why are Armenia and Azerbaijan fighting for the Nagorno-Karabakh region?
Early on Sunday September 27, Armenia announced that it was declaring martial law, mobilizing its army, and ordering civilians to take refuge. He claimed that his neighbor Azerbaijan had launched a military operation within a separatist region called Nagorno-Karabakh. Azerbaijan said it attacked only in response to the Armenian bombardment.
Nagorno-Karabakh is internationally recognized as a territory of Azerbaijan, but it has a predominantly Armenian population that has resisted Azerbaijani rule for more than a century. In 1991, the region of around 150,000 inhabitants declared its independence and has since ruled itself, with the support of Armenia, as the unrecognized Republic of Artsakh.
Nagorno-Karabakh, a landlocked mountainous region within Azerbaijan’s borders, has been a source of disputes since before the creation of the Soviet Union. Tensions were suppressed when Armenia and Azerbaijan were Soviet states, but resurfaced when the cold war ended and the Communist Party’s control of the bloc dissolved.
A war between Armenian and Azerbaijani forces ended with a ceasefire in 1994, with Armenia in full control of Nagorno-Karabakh and other surrounding enclaves of Azerbaijani territory. Azerbaijan is predominantly Muslim and Armenia is predominantly Christian, and some elements on both sides seek to pose the conflict in religious terms.
Michael Safi
As thousands of people fled Nagorno-Karabakh for Armenia as fighting intensified, Pashinyan said the decision was “incredibly painful for me and my people.”
He said the agreement would take effect from 1 am Tuesday (2100 GMT Monday), ending six weeks of fierce fighting in the disputed region that has left hundreds dead.
He said the agreement was “the best possible solution to the current situation.”
Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev later confirmed the news in a televised online meeting with Russian President Vladimir Putin.
“The signed trilateral declaration will become a (crucial) point in the resolution of the conflict,” Aliyev said.
Putin said in a statement Tuesday that he will deploy peacekeepers along the front line in Nagorno-Karabakh after the agreement to stop fighting. He said he hoped the agreement would “establish the necessary conditions for a lasting and comprehensive solution to the Nagorno-Karabakh crisis.”
Arayik Harutyunyan, the leader of the Nagorno-Karabakh region, said on Facebook that he gave his agreement “to end the war as soon as possible.”
Earlier, Azerbaijan said its forces shot down a Russian military helicopter flying over Armenia. The incident occurred about 70 kilometers (45 miles) from Nagorno-Karabakh, but Azerbaijan said the war was a contributing factor.
The fight for Nagorno-Karabakh broke out on September 27. The region has been under the control of ethnic Armenian forces backed by Armenia since 1994.
The fighting has raised fears of a broader regional war, with Turkey supporting its ally Azerbaijan, while Russia has a defense pact with Armenia and a military base there.
Azerbaijan said on Sunday it had captured Shusha, known to Armenians as Shushi, who stands on top of a mountain overlooking Stepanakert, the city considered the capital of the enclave by its ethnic Armenian administration.
Shushi’s position just 10 km (six miles) from Stepanakert provides a strategic advantage to its owner. The city is also located along the main road that connects Stepanakert with Armenia. Long lines of vehicles jammed the territory’s main highway on Sunday as Nagorno-Karabakh residents fled the fighting into Armenia.
“Unfortunately, we are forced to admit that a series of fault lines still haunt us, and the city of Shushi is completely out of our control,” Vagram Pogosian, spokesman for the prime minister in Nagorno-Karabakh, said in a statement. on Facebook. “The enemy is on the outskirts of Stepanakert.”
Azerbaijan said it had regained much of the land in and around Nagorno-Karabakh that it lost in a 1991-94 war over the territory that killed some 30,000 people and forced many more from their homes. Armenia has denied the extent of Azerbaijan’s territorial gains.
Reuters and the Associated Press contributed to this report.
