Armenia and Azerbaijan reach first ceasefire agreement in two years

An Armenian official said late on Wednesday that a truce had been agreed with Azerbaijan after two days of violence linked to a decades-old dispute between former Soviet states over Nagorno-Karabakh territory.

There has been no news from Azerbaijan of a truce to halt the deadliest exchanges between the countries since 2020.

Russia is the preeminent diplomatic force in the region and maintains 2,000 peacekeepers in the region. Moscow brokered the deal that ended the 2020 fighting – dubbed the second Karabakh war – in which hundreds died.

Russian news agencies quoted Armen Grigoryan, secretary of the Armenian Security Council, as telling Armenian television: “Thanks to the involvement of the international community, a ceasefire agreement has been reached.”

The announcement said the truce had been in effect for several hours. The Armenian Defense Ministry had previously said that shootings in border areas had stopped.

Each side blames the other for further clashes.

Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan had previously told parliament that 105 Armenian military personnel had been killed since the violence erupted this week.

Azerbaijan reported 50 military deaths on the first day of combat. Reuters was unable to verify the accounts of both sides.

Grigory Karasin, a senior member of the Russian parliament’s upper house, told the RIA news agency that the truce was won largely through Russian diplomatic efforts.

Russian President Vladimir Putin spoke with Pashinyan, he said. Putin called for calm after violence erupted and other countries called for moderation on both sides.

In his speech to parliament, Pashinyan said his country had appealed to the Moscow-led Collective Security Treaty Organization to help restore its territorial integrity.

“If we say that Azerbaijan attacked Armenia, it means that they managed to establish control over some territories,” he told Russian news agency Tass.

Armenia and Azerbaijan have been fighting for decades over Nagorno-Karabakh, a mountainous enclave recognized as part of Azerbaijan while home to a large Armenian population.

Fighting began at the end of Soviet rule, and Armenian forces took control of large swaths of territory in and around it in the early 1990s. Turkey-backed Azerbaijan largely retook these territories over the course of six weeks in 2020

Since then, skirmishes have erupted periodically, despite meetings between Pashinyan and Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev aimed at winning a comprehensive peace agreement.

Domestic unhappiness in Armenia over the 2020 defeat has sparked repeated protests against Pashinyan, who has rejected reports that he had signed a deal with Baku.

In a Facebook post, he blamed reports of “information sabotage directed by hostile forces”.

A full-blown conflict would risk dragging down Russia and Turkey and destabilizing an important pipeline for oil and gas pipelines, just as the war in Ukraine disrupts energy supplies.

Armenia’s Deputy Foreign Minister Paruyr Hovhannisyan said the clashes could escalate into a war – a second major armed conflict in the former Soviet Union, while Russia’s military is focused on Ukraine.

Azerbaijan has accused Armenia, which is in a military alliance with Moscow and is home to a Russian military base, of bombing its army units.

Baku said Azerbaijani Foreign Minister Jeyhun Bayramov met with US State Department adviser for the Caucasus Philip Reeker, saying that Armenia must withdraw from Azerbaijani territory.

US Secretary of State Antony Blinken said on Tuesday that Russia could “stir the pot” or use its influence to help “calm the waters”.

French Foreign Minister Catherine Colonna, in a call with her colleagues from both countries, also called for an “end to attacks on Armenian territory”.