By Mark Dovich
Officials from Stepanakert and Baku convened Thursday morning for talks on “reintegrating” Nagorno-Karabakh into Azerbaijan, as the death toll in the region topped 200.
The delegations are headed by Nagorno-Karabakh lawmaker Davit Melkumyan and Ramin Mammadov, Baku’s point person for talks with Stepanakert. Footage from Azerbaijani news sites shows Russian peacekeepers escorting Nagorno-Karabakh’s negotiators to the Azerbaijani town of Yevlakh.
The Nagorno-Karabakh government agreed to the talks in a Russian-brokered ceasefire deal Wednesday afternoon that will also see the Artsakh Defense Army fully dissolved. Armenia did not take part in those negotiations, according to Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan.
The ceasefire came just 24 hours after Azerbaijan launched strikes across Nagorno-Karabakh, marking the worst outbreak of hostilities in the region since the 2020 war.
More than 200 people have been killed and 400 wounded, according to the latest update Wednesday evening from the authorities in Nagorno-Karabakh. Those figures include both civilian and military casualties and are likely to rise further as more information comes in from Nagorno-Karabakh’s regional medical facilities.
More than 7,000 civilians have been evacuated or fled from villages reportedly seized by Azerbaijani troops. Thousands of displaced people have temporarily relocated to the non-functioning Stepanakert airport, which is controlled by Russian peacekeepers.
Despite Azerbaijan’s claim that “humanitarian corridors” have been opened to allow Armenians to leave Nagorno-Karabakh for Armenia through the Lachin corridor, so far no Armenian has left the region.
Hundreds more are missing. That includes Siranush Adamyan, a CivilNet reporter based in Stepanakert. CivilNet has not been able to establish contact with her or anyone in her family.
The strikes came after Nagorno-Karabakh endured more than nine months of near-total isolation from the outside world. Azerbaijan’s blockade had pushed Nagorno-Karabakh’s roughly 120,000 Armenians to the brink of famine and prompted warnings of genocide from the former chief prosecutor at the International Criminal Court.
An unknown number of Russian peacekeepers have also been killed in this week’s clashes.
In their daily bulletin Wednesday, the peacekeepers said “Russian servicemen were killed” after their vehicle was shelled returning to a Russian observation post near the village of Chankatagh.
Moscow did not immediately provide the number of Russian peacekeepers killed, nor did it specify which side opened fire on their vehicle, though it did say it was in touch with Baku to “clarify all the circumstances.”
Also read: Kremlin set up guidelines for media coverage of Karabakh crisis
Since 2020, CivilNet has been the only outside media organization with a field office in Stepanakert, providing real-time, on-the-ground coverage from Nagorno-Karabakh.
