Russian peacekeepers deployed to Nagorno-Karabakh after ceasefire deal

MOSCOW/YEREVAN/BAKU: Russian peacekeeping troops deployed to Nagorno-Karabakh on Tuesday under a deal that halted six weeks of fighting between Azeri and ethnic Armenian forces, and froze territorial gains by Azerbaijan.

The agreement ended military action and restored relative calm to the breakaway territory, internationally recognised as part of Azerbaijan but populated and, until recently, fully controlled by ethnic Armenians.

The territory that Azerbaijan will keep includes the mountain enclave's second city of Shusha, which Armenians call Shushi, and ethnic Armenian forces must give up control of a slew of other areas by Dec. 1.

Russian President Vladimir Putin said the deal, announced overnight and also signed by Moscow, should pave the way for a lasting political settlement to fighting that killed thousands, displaced many more and threatened to spark a wider war.

Azerbaijan, which had been trying to regain land lost during a war in the 1990s, hailed the deal as a victory. Azeris celebrated in the capital, Baku, sounding car and bus horns in delight and cheering and waving the Azeri national flag.

"This (ceasefire) statement has historic significance. This statement constitutes Armenia's capitulation. This statement puts an end to the years-long occupation," Azeri President Ilham Aliyev said.

Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan denied Armenia had suffered a defeat but acknowledged a "disaster" for which he took personal responsibility.

Unrest broke out in Yerevan, the capital of Armenia, where crowds stormed and ransacked government buildings overnight, labelling the deal a betrayal. Some protesters urged Pashinyan to quit, a demand later echoed by 17 political parties, while a petition was started demanding the agreement be annulled.

Despite the celebrations in Baku, some Azeris regretted Azerbaijan had stopped fighting before capturing all of Nagorno-Karabakh and were wary about the arrival of peacekeepers from Russia, which dominated the region in Soviet times.

"We were about to gain the whole of Nagorno-Karabakh back," said 52-year-old Kiamala Aliyeva. "The agreement is very vague I don't trust Armenia and I don't trust Russia even more."

NO OPTION

In fighting that flared on Sept. 27, Azerbaijan says it retook much of the land in and around Nagorno-Karabakh that it lost in a 1991-94 war in which about 30,000 people were killed.

The capture of Shusha, or Shushi, appears to have been a turning point. Perched on a mountain top above Stepanakert, Nagorno-Karabakh's biggest city, it gave Azerbaijan's forces a commanding position from which to launch an assault.

Three previous ceasefire had failed and Nagorno-Karabakh leader Arayik Harutyunyan said there had been no option but to conclude a peace deal because of the risk of losing the whole enclave to Azerbaijan.

Pashinyan said he had concluded the peace deal under pressure from his own army.

"I personally bear responsibility for this," he later said on Facebook. "This is a big failure and disaster and mourning for lost lives."