Azerbaijan’s President Ilham Aliyev has announced that his country’s troops have moved into the strategic city of Lachin to replace Russian peacekeepers stationed there, under a peace deal signed with Armenia in 2020. “We, the Azerbaijanis, returned to Lachin. The Azerbaijani army is now in the city of Lachin. The villages of Zabukh and Sus were taken under control,” he tweeted on Friday. Footage released by the defense ministry showed what it said were Azerbaijani army vehicles moving towards the city and the national flag flying over a central building. Latsin is located on a narrow strip of land in a mountainous region that is the only transit option between Armenia and Stepanakert, the capital of the breakaway territory of Nagorno-Karabakh. Nagorno-Karabakh, which is inside Azerbaijan, has been under the control of Armenian-backed forces since a separatist war there ended in 1994. This conflict left not only Nagorno-Karabakh, but large parts of the surrounding territories in Armenian hands. But in renewed fighting that began on September 27, 2020, Azerbaijani troops overwhelmed Armenian forces and entered deep into Nagorno-Karabakh. Their advance forced Armenia to accept a Russian-brokered peace deal on 10 November 2020, which saw the return to Azerbaijan of a significant part of the separatist region. It also forced Armenia to surrender all territories it held outside of Nagorno-Karabakh. Russia has deployed nearly 2,000 troops to monitor the peace deal and help return refugees. Violence erupted earlier this month as Armenian separatists clashed with Azerbaijani forces.
