The Foreign Ministers of Armenia and Azerbaijan met on 9 October in Moscow after Russian president Vladimir Putin’s appeal to them to end the clashes.
The announcement of the meeting came after president Putin called on both sides to meet for negotiations. President Putin had appealed to the two parties to end the clashes and invited Azerbaijan’s Foreign Minister Ceyhun Bayramov and Armenian Foreign Minister Zohrab Mnatsakanyan to Moscow.
Following the meeting, Russia’s Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov announced that Armenia and Azerbeijan had agreed to a ceasefire. The ceasefire will enter into force at 12.00 on 10 October. The details of the ceasefire agreement will be announced later. The two countries are also scheduled to meet again at a Minsk Group meeting.
The Minsk group was established as part of an Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE) initiative aimed at solving the Nagorno-Karabakh dispute since 1992 and consists of the United States, France and Russia.
The consequences of the war
According to DW, at least 400 people have lost their lives since the beginning of the clashes between Azerbaijan and Armenia on 27 September. Armenia’s human rights ombudsman Artak Beglaryan stated this week that renewed fighting had displaced around half of Nagorno-Karabakh’s 140,000 residents and forced some 90% of its women and children from their homes.
Since then, both sides had accused each other of launching the first attacks. Azerbaijan’s condition to terminate the clashes was based on its demand that Armenia withdraws from Nagorno-Karabakh. Nagorno-Karabakh is located in the borders of Azerbaijan according to international law. However, the majority of the population consists of Armenian people.