Dmitry Peskov, spokesman for Russian leader Vladimir Putin admittedthat the withdrawal of the Russian military contingent from the territory of Nagorno-Karabakh has begun.
“It’s true,” Peskov said at a daily press briefing on April 17, but did not give details.
About the beginning of the withdrawal of peacekeepers on April 16 wrote Azerbaijani media. According to their data, the process has been going on for several days.
The Russian peacekeeping contingent was deployed in Nagorno-Karabakh after the escalation of the armed conflict in the fall of 2020. The agreement on this was reached at the negotiations of the leaders of Russia, Azerbaijan and Armenia. Initially, it was assumed that the contingent would be deployed for five years.
The number of the contingent is about two thousand people. In three and a half years, seven Russian soldiers died in Nagorno-Karabakh. Five of them, in particular the deputy commander of the contingent Ivan Kovgan, were killed as a result of Azerbaijani shelling on September 20, 2023; the president of Azerbaijan, Ilham Aliyev, then asked Russia for an official apology for the incident and promised to punish the guilty.
Most of the territory of Nagorno-Karabakh, which is part of Azerbaijan under international law, has been controlled by ethnic Armenians for more than three decades. On September 19, 2023, Azerbaijan fully returned the region under its control. After that, within a few days, tens of thousands of Armenians who lived there left Nagorno-Karabakh.