Russia sends peacekeepers to Nagorno-Karabakh as regional dispute draws to close
Russian President Vladimir Putin has stated that Russian peacekeepers are being deployed to the much-disputed region of Nagorno-Karabakh, after a new ceasefire agreement between Azerbaijan and Armenia.
"A Russian peacekeeping contingent is being deployed
along the contact line in Nagorno-Karabakh and along the corridor connecting
Nagorno-Karabakh with the Republic of Armenia," Putin announced in an
official televised statement on Tuesday.
The Russian Defense Ministry issued a statement saying that
it had begun dispatching 1,960 servicemen, along with their equipment and
vehicles.
"The fifth Il-76 military transport aircraft with
Russian peacekeepers on board took off from the Ulyanovsk-Vostochny airfield.
Personnel from the peacekeeping unit, armored personnel carriers, and materiel
are on board," the ministry noted in the statement.
Earlier, the leaders of Azerbaijan, Armenia, and Russia
signed a statement on bringing the war in the disputed Nagorno-Karabakh to an
end. The agreement came into effect overnight.
Azerbaijan and Armenia had been fighting over the disputed Nagorno-Karabakh
region since September. And Russia was trying to mediate an end to the war.
Karabakh is globally recognized as being part of Azerbaijan,
yet it is held by ethnic Armenian separatists supported by Armenia since 1992,
when they broke from Azerbaijan in a battle that killed some 30,000 people.
According to Putin, the two warring sides would exchange
prisoners of war and the war dead, and all economic and transport links in the
area would be reopened.
Under this agreement, Azerbaijan will reportedly get to keep
all of its regional gains, and ethnic Armenians must hand over control of a
number of other territories between now and December 1.
Putin expressed great hope that the deal would pave the way
for a long-term political settlement of the conflict in the region.
"We are operating on the premise that the agreements
will create the necessary conditions for a long-term and fully-fledged
settlement of the crisis around Nagorno-Karabakh on a fair basis and in the
interests of the Armenian and Azeri peoples,” Putin stated.
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