Azerbaijan hands over 15 captured soldiers to Armenia

Yerevan and Baku-Sana

Armenian Acting Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan announced that 15 soldiers who were detained by Azerbaijan have returned to the country after the Azerbaijani authorities released them.

The TASS news agency quoted Pashinyan as saying that four of the 15 soldiers who were released in Baku yesterday are among those who were captured in the Zhigarkonik region last May, pointing to the important Russian role in achieving this achievement.

"We will continue the process of returning our prisoners, and I would like to point out that we did not exchange the prisoners with maps of minefields, but we responded to Azerbaijan's step with a constructive step," Pashinyan added.

The Azerbaijani Foreign Ministry said in a press statement that in accordance with the agreement reached yesterday with the participation of representatives from Georgia, 15 detained Armenian soldiers were handed over to Armenia on the Azerbaijani-Georgian border in exchange for providing Azerbaijan with maps of 97,000 anti-tank mines and personnel in the Agdam region.

It is noteworthy that after the end of hostilities in the disputed Nagorno-Karabakh region between Armenia and Azerbaijan last fall, Baku regained control of seven regions bordering Karabakh, including the Agdam region, in accordance with the tripartite agreement concluded on November 10, but the issue of removing mines from the areas affected by the conflict It remained a major issue after the end of the war in both countries.