The Kremlin on Wednesday confirmed media reports from Azerbaijan that Russia will withdraw all of its “peacekeepers” from the Nagorno-Karabakh region.
The Russians did nothing while Azerbaijan used force to seize control of the area last year and ruthlessly conducted an ethnic cleansing campaign against the Armenian Christians who lived there.
“Yes, that’s really true,” Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said at a press conference on Wednesday morning when asked about an Azerbaijani news report of the pullout.
The Moscow Times noted that Azeri-language social media posted videos of a Russian military convoy moving out of the region. The report on Azerbaijan’s Musavat news website was not long on details, but it included a photo of Russian armored personnel carriers rumbling down a mountain road on their way out of the contested region.
Another Azeri report said the Russian withdrawal began with troops pulling out of the medieval Armenian monastery of Dadivank, which they had been more-or-less protecting with sandbags and a few armored personnel carriers. The ancient monastery is now “guarded” by Azerbaijan’s security forces.
The Russian Defense Ministry posted its own footage of the withdrawal, prompting Armenian media to point out that Russian peacekeepers were supposedly committed to remaining in Nagorno-Karabakh for another year and a half.
“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,” a foreign policy adviser to Azerbaijan’s President Ilham Aliyev said on Wednesday.
“The process has already begun, with the ministries of defense of Azerbaijan and Russia implementing appropriate measures for the execution of that decision,” the adviser added.
Deutsche Welle (DW) noted that relations between Russia and Armenia have deteriorated sharply since the Azeri conquest of Artsakh, with Armenia suspending its participation in Russia’s Collective Security Treaty Organization (CSTO) and joining the International Criminal Court (ICC) against Moscow’s wishes. Russia may have seen no further political benefit in pretending to protect the few remaining Armenian sites in Artsakh, and may also have decided it needs its troops elsewhere as Georgia grows restless.
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.
Sporadic clashes in the hotly disputed area escalated into warfare in September 2020, a conflict Azerbaijan is generally 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. Azerbaijan followed up with intense artillery barrages and a land invasion in the fall of 2023, which it described as an “anti-terrorist operation,” and soon declared the complete conquest of Artsakh.
Armenia pleaded with Russia to intervene, but its “peacekeepers” offered no protection, and Moscow was silent when the Muslim Azeris commenced a brutally efficient ethnic cleansing campaign that turned the entire Armenian Christian population into refugees. Cities turned into ghost towns as the residents left their homes, businesses, and most of their possessions 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 filed a case with the ICJ in 2021 accusing Azerbaijan of practicing racial hatred against Armenians and destroying their cultural sites in Nagorno-Karabakh.
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