President Aliyev said the agreement was of “historic importance” and amounted to a “capitulation” by Armenia. In an online televised speech, President Putin said Russian peacekeepers would be deployed to patrol the front line. The 2020 Nagorno-Karabakh Ceasefire Agreement is a ceasefire agreement that ended the Nagorno-Karabakh war in 2020. It was signed on November 9 by Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev, Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan and Russian President Vladimir Putin and ended all hostilities in the Nagorno-Karabakh region from 00:00 on November 10, 2020, Moscow time. [1] [2] The President of the self-proclaimed Republic of Artsakh, Arayik Harutyunyan, also agreed to an end to hostilities. [3] However, the unexpected involvement of Western countries in the first exchange offered the possibility of multilateral efforts to help Armenia and Azerbaijan solve their many remaining problems, until a comprehensive peace agreement would eventually resolve the conflict. With Russia`s mediation of the ceasefire and the broader terms it contains, Russian President Vladimir Putin reaffirmed his country`s central role in the conflict as the undisputed leader of the region and became Armenia`s best and only ally, ready to take concrete action on the ground, if only to defend Armenia`s internationally recognized borders. Russia has also marginalized Turkey, which is not a party to the deal, forcing Ankara to negotiate its role as guarantor of Azerbaijan`s security with Russia in the ongoing follow-up negotiations on a joint Russian-Turkish ceasefire monitoring center. According to the agreement, the two warring parties undertook to exchange prisoners of war and the dead.

In addition, the Armenian armed forces were to withdraw from the Armenian-occupied areas around Nagorno-Karabakh by December 1. A Russian peacekeeping force of about 2,000 Russian ground troops was to be sent to the region for at least five years, one of its tasks being to protect the Lachin Corridor, which connects Armenia and the Nagorno-Karabakh region. In addition, Armenia pledged to ensure the “security” of the passage between the Azerbaijani mainland and its enclave of Nakhchivan via a strip of land in the Armenian province of Syunik. Russian FSB border troops would exercise control over transport communications. [5] [6] [7] During and immediately after the conflict, Aliyev directed personal insults against Pashinyan. The mocking phrase “Ne oldu, Pashinyan?” [“What happened, Pashinyan?”] in a speech delivered on November 10 on Azerbaijani and Turkish social networks. In recent weeks, his tone has changed somewhat, and Aliyev`s harshest language has been directed against former Armenian leaders – perhaps because he sees Pashinyan, the co-signatory of the November deal, as a key figure in meeting his demands. Pashinyan himself likely helped spark the 2020 war through his nationalist rhetoric on the Karabakh issue and his refusal to firmly defend a peace process within the framework of the OSCE`s basic principles. However, it is very likely that he did not do so because of a passionate dedication to the cause of Karabakh, but for the opposite reason, because he wanted to postpone the treatment of the Karabakh issue in order to focus on his ambitious national program in Armenia. Almost all Azerbaijanis remember the bloody events of 1990, when Soviet tank protesters turned around in Baku`s central square. Since then, Russian troops have repeatedly intervened in the troubled corners of the Caucasus, often under the nickname peacekeepers, but rather as an invading army.

Now Russia will be crucial for the future of Nagorno-Karabakh, with the region`s long-term status still uncertain. Shahbaz pointed to the recent exchange of fire between Armenian and Azerbaijani forces in Karabakh and Aghdam and that the incident “demonstrates once again the ineffectiveness of the Russian peacekeeping mission and further undermines it,” he wrote in a tweet. “In this regard, criticism of Russia is growing in Baku, while the eventual peace agreement with Yerevan seems to be a better option. This ties in with the issue of the mandate of the Russian peacekeeping force, which has not yet been defined. Despite weeks of negotiations, Moscow and Baku have not agreed on this point. According to reports, the number of Russian troops could exceed what is provided for in the November agreement. For its five-year peacekeeping mission in Karabakh to be successful, Russia must work closely with Armenia and the de facto authorities in Karabakh. But Moscow also wants to avoid the danger of an Azerbaijani veto in extending the mission in 2025. This means maintaining the best possible conditions with Azerbaijan and assuring Baku that Karabakh is no longer a separatist zone. The Russian Defense Ministry confirmed that 1,960 employees would be involved, and planes reportedly left an air base in Ulyanovsk on Tuesday to bring peacekeepers and armored personnel carriers to Karabakh.

Part of their role will be to guard the “Lachin corridor” that connects Stepanakert, the capital of Karabakh, to Armenia. In all these quarrels, it remains unclear who exactly should negotiate a final peace agreement. Before the war, this was the task of the OSCE Minsk Group, led by diplomats from Russia, France and the United States. The Minsk Group was sidelined as a result of the war and is very unpopular with both sides. The Russians have de facto filled this diplomatic vacuum, although neither side is too enthusiastic about it. According to the new peace agreement, both sides will now maintain positions in the territories they currently hold, which will represent a significant gain for Azerbaijan as it has recovered more than 15 to 20 percent of its territory lost in the recent conflict, AFP reported. Ongoing negotiations between Russia and Turkey will continue to shape the momentum in the region – and the extent to which the November 9 ceasefire agreement will be implemented. If Russia and Turkey fail to reach an agreement on key issues, the conflict could erupt again. After signing the agreement, Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan said: “This is not a victory, but there is no defeat until you consider yourself defeated, we will never consider ourselves defeated and it will be a new beginning of an era of national unity and rebirth. [13] After the ceasefire agreement was announced, violent protests erupted in Yerevan.

The speaker of the Armenian parliament, Ararat Mirzoyan, was beaten by an angry mob that stormed the parliament after the peace agreement was announced. However, Pashinyan said Mirzoyan`s life is “not threatened” and that he has undergone surgery. [14] [15] The November agreement could open up the possibility of reinventing the South Caucasus, with new transport links and economic cooperation possible for the first time since Soviet times. It is planned to restore the road and rail link between Nakhchivan and the rest of Azerbaijan via Armenia. Armenians may also be able to travel from Yerevan to southern Armenia and Iran via Nakhchivan, a much easier route than Armenia`s highland roads. However, all this will be difficult without political rapprochement. Russia has indicated that it wants to maintain the main diplomatic mechanism of the Karabakh conflict, the twenty-four-year-old Franco-Russian-American conflict. Co-Chair of the OSCE Minsk Group. The co-chairs were upset by the new war and the (somewhat unfair) perception that they bore responsibility for baku and Yerevan`s failure to make peace with each other. France is generally perceived as a biased mediator in Azerbaijan, especially after the French Senate voted to recognize the independence of Artsakh, as Armenians call Nagorno-Karabakh. The United States is seen as more balanced, as it has established relations on both sides, but has increasingly withdrawn from the issue in recent years. Under the administration of former President Donald Trump, the U.S.

co-president did not receive the rank of ambassador. The only significant initiative on the conflict, taken in 2018 by then-National Security Adviser John Bolton, linked it to the government`s Iran policy. President Putin said the deal would include an exchange of prisoners of war, with “all economic and transport contacts to be released.” The agreement is also unclear on the status of Armenian armed personnel in Nagorno-Karabakh. According to point 1, the parties to the conflict must “remain in their current positions”. Point 4 of the agreement states: “The peace-building forces of the Russian Federation shall be stationed at the same time as the withdrawal of Armenian troops.” Both sides interpret these points differently. .