Azerbaijan halts Karabakh offensive after ceasefire deal with Armenian separatists

By Felix Light and Andrew Osborn

YEREVAN (Reuters) - Azerbaijan said on Wednesday it had halted military action in its breakaway region of Nagorno-Karabakh after its battlefield success forced Armenian separatist forces to agree to a ceasefire that will see the area fully return to Baku's control.

Under the agreement, outlined by Azerbaijan and the Russian Defence Ministry, which has peacekeepers on the ground, separatist forces are meant to disband and disarm, while talks on the future of ethnic Armenians who live there are due to start on Thursday.

The ceasefire took effect from 1 p.m. (0900 GMT) on Wednesday.

In a speech to the nation on Wednesday evening, Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev said that Baku had restored its sovereignty "with an iron fist" and that Armenian forces had begun handing over their weapons and leaving the region.

He said Karabakh Armenians would be told that they could take part in Azerbaijani elections, receive state education, and freely practice their Christianity in his Muslim-majority nation.

"We will turn Karabakh into paradise," said Aliyev, who said he was a man of his word.

Karabakh, a mountainous area in the volatile wider South Caucasus region, is internationally recognised as Azerbaijani territory, but part of it has been run by separatist Armenian authorities since a war that ended in the early 1990s.

Armenians claim a long historical dominance in the area, which they call Artsakh. Azerbaijan links its historical identity to the territory too.

Fearful of what the future might hold, thousands of Armenians massed on Wednesday at the airport in Stepanakert, the capital of Karabakh which is known as Khankendi by Azerbaijan. Others took shelter with Russian peacekeepers in the hope of being flown out.

Azerbaijan, which sent troops backed by artillery strikes into Karabakh on Tuesday to bring the breakaway region to heel, says it plans to integrate the area's 120,000 ethnic Armenians.

But some Armenians - given the region has been at the centre of two wars since the 1991 Soviet fall - are sceptical and neighbouring Armenia has accused Azerbaijan of trying to ethnically cleanse the territory, something Baku denies.

"They are basically saying to us that we need to leave, not stay here, or accept that this is a part of Azerbaijan - this is basically a typical ethnical cleansing operation," Ruben Vardanyan, a former top official in Karabakh's ethnic Armenian administration, told Reuters.

Another separatist Armenian official said at least 200 people had been killed in the fighting and more than 400 wounded. He said 10 of those killed were civilians, of whom five were children. Reuters could not verify his assertion.

ARMENIAN PM UNDER PRESSURE

The outcome, a military victory for Turkey-backed Azerbaijan whose forces far outnumbered the separatists, could cause political turmoil in neighbouring Armenia, where some political forces are angry that Yerevan was unable to do more to protect the Karabakh Armenians.

Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan is already facing calls from some opponents to resign and thousands of protesters gathered in the Armenian capital on Wednesday evening to demand that the government do more for the Karabakh Armenians.

Some of them yelled "Nikol is a traitor!"

Others are furious that Russia, which has peacekeepers on the ground and helped broker an earlier ceasefire deal in 2020 following a 44-day war, was unable to stop Azerbaijan.

The Kremlin rejected that criticism on Wednesday and President Vladimir Putin was quoted as saying that Russian peacekeepers, some of whom were killed on Wednesday when their car was shot at, would protect Karabakh's civilian population.

Separatists running the self-styled "Republic of Artsakh" said they had been forced to agree to Azerbaijan's terms - relayed by Russian peacekeepers - after Baku's army broke through their lines and seized a number of strategic locations.

"The authorities of the Republic of Artsakh accept the proposal from the command of the Russian peacekeeping contingent to cease fire," they said in a statement, complaining that the international community had not done enough to end the fighting.

Azerbaijan had said it could no longer tolerate a situation it regarded as a threat to its security and territorial sovereignty.

HANDOVER OF WEAPONS

Separatist fighters were expected to leave Karabakh for Armenia after handing over their tanks and artillery to Russian peacekeepers, though some of them figure on an Azerbaijani wanted list and are likely to be arrested.

Armenia, which says it has no military forces in Karabakh despite Azerbaijani assertions, did not intervene militarily.

It was unclear how many ethnic Armenians would opt to stay in Karabakh.

Russia's defence ministry, which has thousands of peacekeepers on the ground, broadcast footage of Karabakh Armenians being given temporary shelter at a makeshift Russian military facility.

Armenian Deputy Foreign Minister Paruyr Hovhannissyan told Reuters that Karabakh Armenians could "in an ideal world" live under Azerbaijani rule but that historical experience made it hard to imagine.

Azerbaijan's military operation had faced sharp criticism from the United States and some European countries.

They said the Karabakh problem should have been solved through talks and that Baku's actions were worsening an already dire humanitarian situation on the ground following a nine-month blockade of the area by Azerbaijan that caused acute shortages of food and other staples.

(Writing by Andrew Osborn in London and Guy Faulconbridge in Moscow; Editing by Kevin Liffey, Jon Boyle and Alex Richardson)