Aazatutyun.am. Russian peacekeeping forces reportedly assured Nagorno-Karabakh’s main political factions on Tuesday that a new road connecting the territory to Armenia will have the same status as the existing corridor that will be handed over to Azerbaijan next week.
The five-kilometer-wide Lachin corridor became Karabakh’s sole overland link to Armenia following the 2020 war. Armenian forces pulled out of the rest of the wider Lachin district under the terms of the Russian-brokered ceasefire that stopped the six-week hostilities.
The truce accord calls for the construction of a new Armenia-Karabakh highway that will bypass the town of Lachin and two Armenian-populated villages located within the current corridor protected by Russian peacekeeping troops.
Bowing to strong Azerbaijani pressure, the Armenian side agreed earlier this month to evacuate these settlements by August 25 and start using a bypass road newly constructed by Azerbaijan about a dozen kilometers south of that area.
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The leaders of the five political groups represented in the Karabakh parliament met with the commanders of the Russian peacekeeping contingent to discuss the functioning of the new corridor. According to a statement released by the parliament’s press service, they received assurances that “the new route will have a legal status of the same corridor” and will be controlled by the Russian peacekeepers.
The statement said they also discussed the August 3 fighting in Karabakh which left at least one Azerbaijani and two Karabakh Armenian soldiers dead. It cited the Russian officers as saying that they have drawn “necessary conclusions” and “will make additional efforts to prevent a repeat of such ceasefire violations in the future.”
Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinian on August 4 publicly criticized the Russian troops over the latest deadly fighting there. Pashinian complained that Baku has been stepping up ceasefire violations in Karabakh “in the presence of” the 2,000 peacekeepers deployed after the Armenian-Azerbaijani war.
The Russian Foreign Ministry rejected the criticism.
