Azerbaijan ends Karabakh offensive as Armenian separatists surrender.
Following the announcement of a ceasefire by Armenian separatist forces, Azerbaijan announced the halt of armed operations in the Nagorno-Karabakh region, a breakaway entity, on Wednesday.
The parameters of this ceasefire suggest that Baku may regain control of the territory.
Separatist forces will be disbanded and disarmed, according to a mutually agreed-upon deal that went into effect at 1 p.m. (0900 GMT) on Wednesday.
Furthermore, discussions about the future of the region and its ethnic Armenian community are due to begin on Thursday.
As Armenian separatists surrender, Karabakh, a hilly region in the volatile South Caucasus region, is internationally regarded as Azerbaijani territory, but a portion of it is administered by separatist Armenian authorities who refer to it as their historic homeland.
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Thousands of Armenians gathered at Stepanakert International Airport, the capital of Karabakh, also known as Khankendi by Azerbaijan. Others sought refuge with Russian peacekeepers.
Azerbaijan, which moved troops into Karabakh on Tuesday backed by artillery strikes, says it aims to integrate the region’s 120,000 ethnic Armenians and that their rights will be guaranteed under the constitution.
However, considering that the region has been at the focus of two conflicts since the fall of the Soviet Union in 1991, some Armenians are wary, and neighbouring Armenia has accused Azerbaijan of attempting to ethnically cleanse the territory, which Baku denies.
“They are basically saying to us that we need to leave, not stay here, or accept that this is a part of Azerbaijan – this is basically a typical ethnical cleansing operation,” Ruben Vardanyan, a former top official in Karabakh’s ethnic Armenian administration, told Reuters.
He said that close to 100 people had been killed and hundreds more injured in the fighting. Reuters could not verify that.
The result, a military win for Turkey-backed Azerbaijan, whose forces outnumber the separatists, might trigger political upheaval in neighbouring Armenia, where some political forces are upset that Yerevan did not do more to protect Armenians in Karabakh.
On Wednesday, some opponents of Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan called for his resignation.
Some Armenians are also angry that Russia, which maintains peacekeepers on the ground and helped broker an earlier ceasefire agreement in 2020 after a 44-day battle, was powerless to stop Azerbaijan.
On Wednesday, the Kremlin disputed the criticism, with President Vladimir Putin claiming that Russian forces will safeguard Karabakh’s civilian population.
Separatists in charge of the self-proclaimed “Republic of Artsakh” stated they were compelled to accept Azerbaijan’s requirements, relayed by Russian peacekeepers, after Baku’s army smashed through their lines and took a number of vital places while the rest of the world did nothing.
“The authorities of the Republic of Artsakh accept the proposal from the command of the Russian peacekeeping contingent to cease fire,” they said in a statement.
Azerbaijan said that it could no longer tolerate a scenario that posed a danger to its security and territorial sovereignty.
