Tajik Sergeant Gets Five Years In Prison For Shaving Letters On Young Recruits’ Heads

The Azerbaijani and ethnic Armenian sides have agreed an immediate cease-fire on the second day of a major flare-up in fighting over the territory of Nagorno-Karabakh after the de facto leadership of the mostly ethnic Armenian enclave of Azerbaijan accepted a proposal by the Russian peacekeeping mission there and agreed to talks on the territory’s “reintegration” into Azerbaijan.

The expected halt in intense fighting in the decades-old Caucasus hot spot comes as international fears of a widening conflict mounted and as the death toll increased in the deadliest military escalation there in nearly three years.

The apparent concession came hours after Baku had signaled its intention to continue its military operations in the absence of a surrender by ethnic Armenian forces despite appeals from the United Nations, Western powers, and Russia for a halt to the hostilities that have killed dozens in the past 24 hours.

Fighting was to have been suspended by 1 p.m. local time.

The ethnic Armenian leadership of the territory they call Artsakh, which is recognized as part of Azerbaijan but for decades until late 2020 was controlled by Armenians, reported accepting the Russian proposal about an hour earlier.

It also accepted a proposal from Baku on talks to integrate the region into Azerbaijan, a potentially bitter pill to swallow for the government and public in neighboring Armenia, which has made control of Nagorno-Karabakh a nationalist keystone since the breakup of the Soviet Union and where anti-government protests greeted news of the latest Azerbaijani offensive.

Both sides agreed to talks on September 21 in the Azerbaijani city of Yevlax, about 265 kilometers west of Baku.

Nagorno-Karabakh’s de facto leadership in Stepanakert said that “issues raised by the Azerbaijani side on reintegration, ensuring the rights and security of the Armenians of Nagorno-Karabakh…will be discussed at a meeting between representatives of the local Armenian population and the central authorities of the Republic of Azerbaijan.”

The Azerbaijani Presidency and Defense Ministry confirmed agreeing to the cease-fire.

Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev’s office issued a similarly worded statement announcing a meeting that “representatives of the Armenian residents of Karabakh to discuss reintegration issues based on the constitution and laws of the Republic of Azerbaijan” at the Yevlax meeting.

It was a dramatic turn in a fast-moving crisis that sent shockwaves through the region and beyond.

Armenia’s embattled prime minister, Nikol Pashinian, who was blamed by nationalists and other critics for losses in the 2020 fighting, noted the cease-fire but immediately distanced his government from its terms.

“Armenia did not participate in drafting the text of the cease-fire declaration in Nagorno-Karabakh under the mediation of Russian peacekeepers,” Pashinian told the nation in a televised appearance, according to AFP.

He added in a shot at Baku’s justification for its offensive that Yerevan “does not have an army” in Nagorno-Karabakh.

Pashinian also expressed hope that there would be no new military escalation. “Now the most important issue is that the right of Nagorno-Karabakh Armenians to live in their homes is fully ensured by the Russian Federation,” he said, according to RFE/RL’s Armenian Service.

A deputy foreign minister in Armenia had been quoted by Reuters as saying a further accumulation of Azerbaijani forces appeared to be readying a “second stage” of the operation.

Hours earlier, Azerbaijan’s Defense Ministry said that what it has described as an “anti-terrorist operation” targeting saboteurs was continuing “successfully.”

Aliyev had also issued a statement saying he had told U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken in a phone call “that anti-terrorist measures will be stopped if [forces in Karabakh] lay down their arms.”

The UN Security Council, meanwhile, scheduled an emergency meeting for September 21 as the international community sought ways to avoid an intensification of a long-running conflict that has already sparked two intense wars between the post-Soviet Caucasus neighbors, most recently just three years ago.

The de facto human rights ombudsman in the ethnic Armenian-controlled Azerbaijani region said early on September 20 that 32 people had been killed, including seven civilians, two of them children, and more than 200 wounded as a result of shelling, although some death estimates put the death toll considerably higher.

“The secretary-general calls in the strongest terms for an immediate end to the fighting, de-escalation, and stricter observance of the 2020 cease-fire and principles of international humanitarian law,” UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres’s spokesman, Stephane Dujarric said.

Blinken spoke by telephone with the leaders of both countries late on September 19.

The U.S. State Department said he urged Aliyev to stop military operations in Nagorno-Karabakh, which is internationally recognized as Azerbaijani territory, immediately and return to dialogue.

Blinken “noted President Aliyev’s expressed readiness to halt military actions and for representatives of Azerbaijan and the population of Nagorno-Karabakh to meet, and he underscored the need for immediate implementation,” according to the State Department.

Blinken reportedly told Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinian that the United States “fully supports Armenia’s sovereignty, independence, and territorial integrity.”

A U.S. military spokesperson said the outbreak of fighting did not affect the ongoing 10-day joint military exercises with Armenian troops in Armenia, dubbed Eagle Partner 2023, which were scheduled to conclude on September 20.

In an increasingly rare show of agreement with the West, Moscow called on both sides to stop the violence.

It added that Russian peacekeepers were assisting the civilian population in Nagorno-Karabakh, made up mostly of around 120,000 ethnic Armenians, and providing medical and evacuation assistance.

TASS quoted the Russian Defense Ministry as saying on September 20 that its peacekeepers had evacuated more than 2,000 civilians from Nagorno-Karabakh.

The Armenian and Azerbaijani foreign ministers are both in New York, where they were said to be holding meetings with colleagues and international officials including separate meetings with Blinken’s deputy for European and Eurasian affairs, Yuri Kim, who days ago warned against any military escalation in Nagorno-Karabakh.

But it was unclear whether Armenian Foreign Minister Ararat Mirzoyan and Azerbaijani Foreign Minister Jeyhun Bayramov planned to meet, whether personally or via mediators.

After weeks of bloody skirmishes and one day after an aid shipment was finally allowed into the area, Azerbaijan launched the major escalation on September 19 with the breakaway region already teetering on the brink of a humanitarian crisis after being essentially blockaded for more than eight months despite international calls for Baku to allow food and other shipments.

The shelling started shortly after Azerbaijan blamed what it called “Armenian sabotage groups” for two separate explosions that killed at least four military personnel and two civilians in areas of Nagorno-Karabakh that are under the control of Russian peacekeepers.

Those peacekeepers are in place since a cease-fire that ended six weeks of fighting in 2020 in which Azerbaijan recaptured much of the territory and seven surrounding districts controlled since the 1990s by ethnic Armenians with Yerevan’s support.

Azerbaijan’s Defense Ministry said on the first day of intensification that “only legitimate military targets are being destroyed,” and its Foreign Ministry said the only path peace in the region is the complete withdrawal of Armenian forces from the territory.

A former top administrator of ethnic-Armenian de facto authorities in the breakaway region, Ruben Vardanian, claimed to Reuters from Nagorno-Karabakh that “hundreds of people have been injured and close to 100 people have been killed.”

Ethnic Armenians inside Nagorno-Karabakh quickly took to social media with posts of video and accounts saying the de facto capital, Stepanakert, known as Xankandi in Azeri, was under bombardment.

In the evening, angry crowds gathered outside government buildings in Yerevan, calling for Pashinian to resign, and clashed with police.

Protesters angry by what they saw as Moscow’s failure to stop Azerbaijan also gathered outside the Russian Embassy in Yerevan, chanting anti-Russian slogans, TASS reported.

The European Union’s top diplomat, Josep Borrell, condemned the operation and called on Azerbaijan to stop its military activities in Nagorno-Karabakh, while saying Brussels remains committed to facilitating dialogue to bring a lasting peace to the region.

U.S. and European leaders had long called for Azerbaijan to ease the transit of humanitarian aid to the beleaguered region, which is experiencing shortages of food, energy, and medicine.

Armenia and Azerbaijan have fought two wars over Nagorno-Karabakh, a predominantly Armenian-populated mountainous enclave that is internationally recognized as part of Azerbaijan.

The cease-fire signed at the end of the 2020 conflict was hailed as a triumph in Azerbaijan, but Armenian losses sparked months of massive protests in Yerevan to demand Pashinian’s resignation.

Nagorno-Karabakh and seven nearby regions had been controlled by ethnic Armenians since a bitter war began as the Soviet Union crumbled in the late 1980s and then gave way to a three-decade “frozen conflict.”

With reporting by AFP, AP, and Reuters