Source: Al Jazeera [Qatari state media]
“Russian peacekeepers have begun withdrawing from Azerbaijan’s Nagorno-Karabakh region, ending Moscow’s years-long military presence there, according to officials. ‘This is indeed the case,’ Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov told the Interfax news agency on Wednesday in response to media inquiries without giving a timeframe for the withdrawal. Nearly 2,000 Russian peacekeeping soldiers were deployed to the breakaway South Caucasus region of Nagorno-Karabakh 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 Nagorno-Karabakh by force in September last year in a move that triggered an exodus of 120,000 ethnic Armenians living there and the arrest of the breakaway area’s ethnic Armenian leaders.” (04/17/24)