six weeks of fighting<\/a> between Azerbaijani and ethnic Armenian forces.<\/p>\n\n\n\nDespite 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\u2019s ethnic Armenian leaders.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Armenia\u2019s political leadership accused Moscow at the time of failing to protect Armenian interests, a charge Russia rejected. The peacekeepers had originally been due to stay until November 2025.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The Azerbaijani news agency APA reported late on Tuesday that Russian peacekeepers had begun withdrawing and the first personnel and equipment had left from a monastery revered by Armenians in Azerbaijan\u2019s Kalbajar district a few days ago.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Hikmet Hajiyev, foreign policy adviser to Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev, was cited by the state news agency Azertac as confirming a withdrawal agreement had been struck.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cThe early withdrawal of Russian peacekeepers, temporarily stationed in the territory of the Republic of Azerbaijan in accordance with the trilateral statement signed on November 10, 2020, has been decided by the leaders of both countries,\u201d it quoted him as saying.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Al Jazeera: Russian peacekeepers have begun withdrawing from Azerbaijan\u2019s Nagorno-Karabakh region, ending Moscow\u2019s years-long military presence there, according to officials. \u201cThis is indeed the case,\u201d 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… <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":38759,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-38756","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news-in-english"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/gyalchisarshog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/38756","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/gyalchisarshog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/gyalchisarshog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gyalchisarshog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gyalchisarshog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=38756"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/gyalchisarshog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/38756\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":38758,"href":"https:\/\/gyalchisarshog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/38756\/revisions\/38758"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gyalchisarshog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/38759"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/gyalchisarshog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=38756"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gyalchisarshog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=38756"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gyalchisarshog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=38756"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}