Al Jazeera:
Russian peacekeepers have begun withdrawing from Azerbaijan’s Nagorno-Karabakh region, ending Moscow’s years-long military presence there, according to officials.
“This is indeed the case,” Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov told the Interfax news agency on Wednesday in response to media inquiries without giving a timeframe for the withdrawal.
Nearly 2,000 Russian peacekeeping soldiers were deployed to the breakaway South Caucasus region of Nagorno-Karabakh in November 2020 under a Moscow-brokered deal that halted six weeks of fighting between Azerbaijani and ethnic Armenian forces.
Despite the deployment, Azerbaijan retook Nagorno-Karabakh by force in September last year in a move that triggered an exodus of 120,000 ethnic Armenians living there and the arrest of the breakaway area’s ethnic Armenian leaders.
Armenia’s political leadership accused Moscow at the time of failing to protect Armenian interests, a charge Russia rejected. The peacekeepers had originally been due to stay until November 2025.
The Azerbaijani news agency APA reported late on Tuesday that Russian peacekeepers had begun withdrawing and the first personnel and equipment had left from a monastery revered by Armenians in Azerbaijan’s Kalbajar district a few days ago.
Hikmet Hajiyev, foreign policy adviser to Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev, was cited by the state news agency Azertac as confirming a withdrawal agreement had been struck.
“The early withdrawal of Russian peacekeepers, temporarily stationed in the territory of the Republic of Azerbaijan in accordance with the trilateral statement signed on November 10, 2020, has been decided by the leaders of both countries,” it quoted him as saying.
