The cease-fire, which came into effect at 1 p.m. on Wednesday, appeared initially to be largely holding, with Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan reporting a “sharp decrease” in hostilities.
Baku launched the new attack on Tuesday, demanding the dissolution of the unrecognized government in Nagorno-Karabakh and its armed forces and the withdrawal of Armenian forces, with the aim of reasserting control over the mountainous region. Armenia has denied the presence of its forces there.
If the cease-fire holds, it could avert a new, bloody conflict in a fragile region that is strategically important to the West, Russia and Turkey, given Azerbaijan’s oil and gas reserves, which have assumed greater importance as Western nations have slashed their reliance on Russian energy.
In the first Karabakh war, when Armenia took control of Nagorno-Karabakh and several other regions in Azerbaijan, more than half a million Azerbaijanis were displaced, in a humiliating defeat for Baku.
In a 44-day war in 2020, Azerbaijan reconquered most of its lost territory. Moscow then brokered a truce and deployed Russian peacekeepers to protect the Armenian population in the region.
Nagorno-Karabakh’s government released a statement Wednesday saying it had accepted the cease-fire deal proposed by the command of Russia’s peacekeeping mission in the region because the international community failed “to stop the war and resolve the situation.” In the statement, it did not detail the cease-fire conditions.
But the success of the cease-fire may depend on talks Thursday on fully reintegrating the region and its population into Azerbaijan, outlined on Wednesday by Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev.
A statement from Aliyev’s office said Azerbaijani officials would hold talks on Thursday with Nagorno-Karabakh representatives in the Azerbaijani city of Yevlakh, west of Baku, about the reintegration of the region “based on the Constitution of the Republic of Azerbaijan and its laws.”
Outlining Baku’s expectations for the talks, Azerbaijani presidential adviser Hikmat Hajiyev said Azerbaijani government structures would be reintroduced in Nagorno-Karabakh and local military forces would have to surrender their arms.
Since the 2020 war, the government of Nagorno-Karabakh, known by the local Armenian population as Artsakh, and its armed units have continued to operate. A lasting peace deal to integrate the ethnic Armenian region into Azerbaijan has proven elusive.
Pashinyan, the Armenian prime minister, conceded in May that the region is part of Azerbaijan’s territory, and he has focused on winning security guarantees for Armenian residents there.
Russia, with ties to Armenia and Azerbaijan, has sought to maintain its role as peacemaker.
But Moscow’s role in forging a lasting peace deal has met little success, and Russian peacekeepers meanwhile failed to prevent a nine-month-long Azerbaijani blockade of the only road linking Armenia to Nagorno-Karabakh, leading to a humanitarian crisis.
As Azerbaijan pressed its attack before Wednesday’s cease-fire, Russian peacekeepers evacuated more than 2,000 Armenians from areas close to the fighting — bringing them to the Russian peacekeepers’ base in the region, according to video aired on Armenian news outlet Alpha News.
A number of Russian servicemen were killed when their vehicle was hit by small-arms fire near Canyataq, the Russian Defense Ministry said Wednesday. It gave no details on how many were killed.
On Tuesday, Armenia’s Foreign Ministry said Baku had “unleashed another large-scale aggression against the people of Nagorno-Karabakh, aiming to complete its policy of ethnic cleansing.”
But Pashinyan said Tuesday that Armenia would not be drawn into the new military conflict, triggering angry protests in the Armenian capital, Yerevan, against the Pashinyan government and against Russia, both seen by protesters as betraying Armenians in Nagorno-Karabakh.
On Wednesday, amid new protests in Yerevan over the cease-fire, Pashinyan said that Armenia was not part of the cease-fire deal between Nagorno-Karabakh and Azerbaijan.
Since December, Baku has squeezed the Nagorno-Karabakh population and increased pressure on its government by imposing a blockade on the road along the Lachin Corridor, the only route linking Nagorno-Karabakh with Armenia.
Earlier this month, the Nagorno-Karabakh government agreed to open a direct road link from Baku-held Azerbaijani territory to the region for the first time in decades, in return for the reopening of the Lachin Corridor road. On Monday, the International Committee of the Red Cross delivered humanitarian aid via both roads.
Renewing his military attack on Nagorno-Karabakh on Tuesday, Aliyev appears to have seen an opportunity in Moscow’s distraction with its war on Ukraine, and in Baku’s increased importance as a source of energy for the West.
The renewed attacks, however, were widely condemned by Western leaders, who called for an immediate end to Baku’s military operation — despite long-standing international support for Azerbaijan’s territorial claim to separatist enclaves.
Azerbaijan’s forces claimed to have achieved a rapid military breakthrough in the latest fighting, asserting that they took control of more than 90 Armenian combat positions. Those claims could not be verified.
However, Nagorno-Karabakh’s government confirmed in a statement Wednesday that Azerbaijan had succeeded in breaking through Nagorno-Karabakh defenses in several regions, taking control of a number of strategic positions and roads. It said the Azerbaijani forces, “several times superior in manpower and military equipment,” had inflicted “heavy losses” on the Nagorno-Karabakh forces.
Russian President Vladimir Putin said Russian peacekeepers were working with all sides in the conflict.
“Our peacekeepers are working very actively with all parties involved in the conflict. They’re doing everything possible to protect the civilian population,” he said, in comments as he met with Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi in Moscow on Wednesday.