Nagorno-Karabakh ceasefire center closes as Russia withdraws
STORY: Russian and Turkish flags were lowered on Friday (26 April) to mark the closure of a ceasefire monitoring center in Nagorno-Karabakh.
It signals the end of a multi-year deployment of Russian peacekeepers in the strategic South Caucasus region.
Nearly 2,000 Russian peacekeeping troops were sent to the breakaway region in November 2020, under a Moscow-brokered deal that halted six weeks of fighting between Azerbaijani and ethnic Armenian forces.
Despite the deployment, Azerbaijan retook Karabakh by force in September last year, triggering an exodus of at least 100,000 ethnic Armenians living there and the arrest of the area's ethnic Armenian leaders.
Armenia's political leadership accused Moscow of failing to protect Armenian interests, a charge Russia rejected.
The decision was announced earlier this month and ends a deployment that was set to run until 2025.
Peacekeepers from Russia and Turkey as well as Azeri soldiers gathered at the center near the ghost city of Aghdam in a part of Karabakh controlled by Baku since 2020.
Sergei Istrakov, deputy chief of the general staff of Russia's armed forces, expressed his gratitude for the friendship between the three countries.
He said the primacy of international humanitarian law made it possible to complete the operation ahead of schedule.
Armenia and Azerbaijan have been inching towards a peace deal to end the conflict over Karabakh, which dates to 1988.
The final group of the peacekeeping contingent are due to leave at the end of May, an Azerbaijan defense ministry source told Reuters.
