Azerbaijan on Wednesday (November 25th) regained control of the Kalbajar district, bordering Nagorny Karabakh, the second of three retrocessions to be made by Armenia after the ceasefire that ended six weeks of fighting in this disputed region.
Read also: Nagorny Karabakh: Paris wants "international supervision" of the ceasefire
In a statement, the defense ministry in Baku said that "
Azerbaijani army units entered Kalbajar district on November 25
" early on Wednesday, under the signed end-of-hostilities agreement. at the beginning of November by Armenia, Azerbaijan and Russia.
Located between the self-proclaimed Republic of Nagorno Karabakh and Armenia, Kalbajar should have been surrendered on November 15, but Baku had postponed the event.
In a televised speech, Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev vowed to defend "
the national heritage
" of the many religious monuments in Kalbajar and criticized the Armenians for "
setting fire to forests
" and "
burning down houses they had not built
”before their departure.
By signing the ceasefire, Yerevan agreed to surrender three districts surrounding Nagorno Karabakh that had escaped Baku's control since a first war in the 1990s.
The district of Kalbajar, like that of Aghdam surrendered on November 20 and that of Lachin which is to be surrendered on December 1, formed a buffer zone surrounding the separatist region.
Four other districts with the same role were taken over militarily by Baku during the fighting.
The Azerbaijani army has released footage of the return of its soldiers, including night-time demining operations on the roads in this mountainous region.
AFP saw Armenian residents chopping down trees, recovering power cables and even loading parts of a hydroelectric dam onto a truck before leaving.
It is out of the question for the Armenians that the Azerbaijanis live in their houses, explained a 53-year-old mason, Gaguik Iakchibekian: "
So they burn (the houses, note), the trees are felled and the people take everything
".
At the end of the first war in 1994, the reverse exodus had taken place, with the Azerbaijani population fleeing these regions then repopulated by Armenians.
The end of hostilities agreement, signed when the military situation was catastrophic for Armenia, enshrines the victory of Azerbaijan and grants it significant territorial gains after six weeks of a conflict which claimed several thousand victims.
It nevertheless allows the survival of Nagorno Karabakh, diminished, and sees the deployment of 2,000 Russian peacekeepers.
Return of refugees
In Dadivank, a town in Kalbajar district, engineer Grigory Grigorian said he regretted leaving the house he had lived in for 25 years, the place where his "
children grew up and went to school
."
The city is known to Armenians for its 12th century monastery.
In recent weeks, worshipers have flocked to pray there one last time, worrying about the future of the place despite assurances from Azerbaijan that it will be preserved.
In Baku, the atmosphere was euphoric.
Ilkin Mammadov, a 25-year-old student, said he wanted to "
introduce Kalbajar to the whole world
" while Ayshe Alieva, 22, thanked the Russian troops without whom "
we could not have lived there
".
Before the handover, Vladimir Poutine spoke by telephone with Ilham Aliev and the Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pachinian to, according to the Kremlin, evoke the "
modalities of the work of the Russian peacekeepers
".
The Russian president also spoke with his Turkish counterpart Recep Tayyip Erdogan, with whom he discussed “
the creation of a
joint
ceasefire control center
”.
Last week, France called on Russia to lift the "
ambiguities
" surrounding the ceasefire, especially on Turkey's role, Paris worrying that Ankara is associated with peacekeeping operations.
Moscow assured that no Turkish soldiers would be deployed.
Signed under Russian patronage, the ceasefire recalled the decisive role of Moscow in its Caucasian precinct but also the growing influence of Turkey, unwavering support of Baku.
Conversely, Western countries seem to be losing momentum and neither France nor the United States, mediators as members of the “
Minsk group
” charged in the 1990s with finding a lasting solution to the crisis. 'have obtained convincing results.
