The delegation of Armenian separatists from Nagorno-Karabakh arrived in the Azerbaijani city of Yevlakh on Thursday (September 21st) for talks with Azerbaijan on the reintegration of the secessionist territory, according to the official Azerbaijani news agency Azertag.
The talks were announced a day earlier after a military blitz in Baku forced the separatists to capitulate after decades of conflict. Images from the Azertag agency show a column of black 4X4s arriving at the scene of the negotiations, followed by a vehicle with a Russian flag flying and Russian army license plates.
Support from Turkey
Since the end of 2020 and a previous war, Russia has had a mission of peacekeepers in Nagorno-Karabakh. Azerbaijan on Tuesday launched a military blitz against the separatists, forcing them to surrender in less than 24 hours and surrender all their weapons. Baku now wants to negotiate the reintegration of the territory that had seceded after the fall of the USSR, leading to two bloody wars, in the 1990s and in 2020.
Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan on Thursday reaffirmed his "unreserved support" for Baku during a telephone conversation with his Azerbaijani counterpart Ilham Aliyev, the Turkish presidency announced. "President Erdogan received information from Mr. Aliyev about the current situation of the operation launched by Azerbaijan. President Erdogan once again expressed Turkey's full support for Azerbaijan to Aliyev," the presidency said in a statement.