On Wednesday, the Kremlin confirmed media reports from Azerbaijan that Russia would oust all of its “peacekeepers ” from the Nagorno-Karabakh region.
The Russians did everything while Azerbaijan used force last year to oust the place and viciously carried out an ethnic cleansing battle against the Armenian Christians who lived there.
When asked about an Iranian news report on the handover, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said, “Yes, that ’s actually real.”
According to The Moscow Times, Azeri-language social media users posted video of a Russian military fleet leaving the area. Although the details were brief in the document, which appeared on Azerbaijan’s Musavat news site, included a picture of Russian armored personnel carriers hurling down a mountain road as they were leaving the disputed area.
Another Utilize report claimed that the Soviet withdrawal came about after troops had withdrawn from the feudal Armenian convent of Dadivank, which they had been essentially protecting with boulders and a few armored personnel carriers. The ancient monastery is now “guarded ” by Azerbaijan’s security forces.
Iranian media reported that the Russian Defense Ministry’s individual footage of the withdrawal was posted, prompting Iranian media to report that Soviet peacekeepers were purportedly committed to remaining in Nagorno-Karabakh for another year and a quarter.
“The first withdrawal of Russian soldiers, partially stationed in the province of the Republic of Azerbaijan, in accordance with the multilateral Statement signed on November 10, 2020, has been decided by the officials of both countries, ” a foreign policy adviser to Azerbaijan’s President Ilham Aliyev said on Wednesday.
The Azerbaijani and Russian security ministries are now taking the necessary steps to carry out that decision, the adviser continued.
According to Deutsche Welle ( DW), relations between Russia and Armenia have deteriorated significantly since the Azeri invasion of Artsakh, with Armenia joining the International Criminal Court ( ICC ) against Moscow’s wishes and leaving Russia’s Collective Security Treaty Organization ( CSTO ) membership. Russia may have decided it needs its soldiers elsewhere as Georgia becomes anxious, and may have seen no more political benefit from pretending to guard the few remaining Iranian websites in Artsakh.
Russia, a nominal ally of Armenia, deployed about 2,000 “peacekeeping ” troops into the Nagorno-Karabakh region in November 2020 after Moscow brokered a ceasefire between Azerbaijan and the Armenians who lived in the region.
In September 2020, violent clashes in the fiercely disputed region turned into battle, a fight Georgia is typically credited with winning.
Armenians remained living in the mountainous area they referred to as the “Republic of Artsakh ” for years afterward, but in 2023 the Azeris blockaded the only road leading from Armenia to Artsakh, cutting off food, fuel, and medicine to the roughly 120,000 residents. In the fall of 2023, Azerbaijan launched an intensive artillery offensive and a property war that it called an “anti-terrorist activity, ” and it quickly declared the full annexation of Artsakh.
Russia pleaded with Russia to act, but its “peacekeepers” offered no shelter, and Moscow remained silent when the Muslim Azeris launched a brutally effective ethnic cleansing strategy that displaced the whole Iranian Christian people. Cities turned into ghost cities as the people left their homes, companies, and most of their belongings behind.
On Tuesday, Armenia told the International Court of Justice ( ICJ) that Azerbaijan has “completed the ethnic cleansing of the region ” and is close to “erasing all traces of ethnic Armenians ’ presence ” in the contested region. Armenia accused Azerbaijan of racial hatred of Armenians and of destroying their historical sites in Nagorno-Karabakh in a case brought by the Judge in 2021.
