Armenia’s Pashinyan Says He’s Signed Pact to End Karabakh Fighting

(Bloomberg) -- Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan said he’s signed an agreement to end the war over Nagorno-Karabakh, just days after Azerbaijani forces captured a key strategic city in the contested region.

“I made that decision as a result of a deep analysis of the military situation,” he wrote in a Facebook post early Tuesday, calling it “an extremely difficult decision.”

“It’s not a victory,” he wrote. “But there’s no defeat unless you consider yourself to be the loser.”

The deal was signed with the leaders of Russia and Azerbaijan and takes effect immediately. Russian President Vladimir Putin said the agreement would be the basis for long-term stability in the war-torn region and called for the deployment of peacekeepers, adding that Azerbaijani and Armenian troops will halt at their current positions, according to a Kremlin statement.

Russia’s Defense Ministry said it’s deploying almost 2,000 peacekeepers and 90 armored personnel carriers to Nagorno-Karabakh following the accord to halt the war, the Interfax news service reported early Tuesday.

Turkish forces will also be deployed in Nagorno-Karabakh as peacekeepers, Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev said in an address to the nation, the Tass news service reported.

The agreement reached by the three leaders doesn’t mention Turkish peacekeepers, however. It sets out a timetable for Armenian withdrawal from occupied Azerbaijani districts outside Nagorno-Karabakh in stages by Dec. 1, and guarantees a transport corridor linking the enclave to Armenia, protected by Russian troops, according to Russia’s state-run Sputnik news service.

Hundreds of protesters took to the streets of the Armenian capital, Yerevan, after Pashinyan’s announcement. Demonstrators broke into the parliament and others gathered outside the govenrment building and the prime minister’s house, according to Interfax.

The two sides have been fighting for more than six weeks over the enclave and surrounding regions, which are internationally recognized as part of Azerbaijan but were taken by Armenia in a bloody war in the early 1990s. More than 5,000 people have been killed in the latest round of fighting, according to Russian officials.

Azerbaijani Advance

Aliyev, backed by Turkey, vowed to retake the territory and on Sunday announced that his forces had retaken the key city of Shusha, known as Shushi in Armenian, a strategic highland above Stepanakert, Nagorno-Karabakh’s capital. The government there, backed by Armenia, had warned that the loss of Shushi would lead to the fall of the entire region.

“We have won this victory on the battlefield, not at the negotiating table,” Aliyev said in a televised speech on Sunday. “I have said many times that, despite all the statements, there are military solutions to this conflict.”

Late Monday, Baku apologized for shooting down a Russian military helicopter over Armenia, killing two. Russia’s Foreign Ministry welcomed the speedy apology and called for a full investigation. Moscow has a military base in Armenia and the two countries have a mutual-defense pact, but Russia also has close relations with Azerbaijan.

Prior to the fighting that erupted Sept. 27, Armenian forces controlled Nagorno-Karabakh and seven surrounding districts of Azerbaijan as a buffer zone. A Russia-brokered truce in 1994 halted a war that had killed 30,000 and displaced 1 million amid the collapse of the Soviet Union. International mediators led by France, Russia and the U.S. have tried without success for nearly three decades to negotiate a peace deal.

Azerbaijan says it’s fighting to restore control over its internationally recognized territory. Armenia says it’s defending Nagorno-Karabakh’s right to self-determination after its Armenian majority voted for independence.

Three attempts by Russia, France and the U.S. since Oct. 10 to restore a cease-fire failed to take hold. In contrast to previous outbreaks of fighting, Russia has struggled to rein in the warring sides in its former Soviet backyard, partly because of active support given to Aliyev’s military campaign from Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan.

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