The second Karabakh war, which began on Sept. 27, ended this week, with Armenia soundly defeated and Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan forced to accept the ceasefire demands made by Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev. The accord to end the war was signed by Pashinyan, Aliyev and President Vladimir Putin on Nov. 9. Both sides agreed to a timetable for Armenia’s withdrawal from what it has called its “security buffer zone” around Karabakh. By Nov. 15, all Armenian forces must be out of Azerbaijan’s Kalbajar District; by Nov. 20, from parts of the Agdam and Gazakh districts; and by Dec. 1, from the Lachin District. All the other previously occupied lands of the “security buffer zone” were liberated by Azerbaijani forces over the past month and a half of fighting. Some 2,000 Russian peacekeepers will move into Karabakh to guarantee the ceasefire, supervise the execution of the trilateral agreement and to assert control over the so-called “Lachin corridor”—a highway from Armenia to Karabakh, through the city of Lachin. The return of refugees to Karabakh and the formerly occupied surrounding districts will be supervised by the United Nations. Moreover, a land corridor through Armenian territory will be established from the Azerbaijani exclave bordering Turkey—the Nakhchivan Autonomous Republic—to mainland Azerbaijan. The transit of goods and people from Nakhchivan to mainland Azerbaijan will be supervised by Russian Federal Security Service (FSB) Border Guards.
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Pavel Felgenhauer: The Karabakh war ends as Russian troops move in
A man stands among the debris of a destroyed house hit by a rocket strike during the ongoing military conflict between Armenia and Azerbaijan over the breakaway region of Nagorno-Karabakh, in a residential area of the city of Ganja, Azerbaijan, on Oct. 21, 2020.
