Azerbaijan’s army entered the last area in the disputed Nagorno-Karabakh enclave on Tuesday (local time). Lachin district is one of the areas that Armenia had to return to Azerbaijan under the terms of a recent ceasefire.
The Azerbaijani Ministry of Defense published a video showing a tank with a column of trucks driving into Lachin district.
According to reporters from the French news agency AFP the column was flanked by vehicles of the Russian army. Russia acted as a mediator between the two struggling old Soviet republics and provides a peacekeeping force to ensure compliance with the accord.
As in Aghdam and Kalbajar, two other districts around Nagorno-Karabakh that have been ceded by Armenia, ethnic Armenians in large numbers decided to leave Lachin before Azerbaijani forces took the region. They took as much stuff as possible with them, including furniture, livestock and even firewood. Some fleeing Armenians also set their houses on fire.
In late September, decades of conflict between Azerbaijan and Armenia over the Nagorno-Karabakh region flared up again. The enclave with an ethnic Armenian majority seceded from Baku in the 1990s and declared itself independent, which, incidentally, was hardly recognized by any country. Azerbaijan has since made several attempts to regain control of the area.
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