On Friday, Azerbaijan entered a district bordering Nagorno-Karabakh that was ceded to them by Armenia as part of a Russia-brokered ceasefire. Azeri forces took the town of Aghdam and the district surrounding it by the same name, the first of several territories to be ceded by Armenia.
“Today, with a feeling of endless pride, I am informing my people about the liberation of Aghdam,” Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev said in a televised address. Aghdam had been under Armenian control since the early 1990s.
The Armenian government is still facing backlash from its people for signing a deal that ceded territory to Azerbaijan. Under the agreement, the Azeris are allowed to keep what territory they captured in Nagorno-Karabakh, and Armenia agreed to handover Aghdam and two other districts surrounding Nagorno-Karabakh.
Armenia appointed a new defense minister on Friday in the face of criticism over the ceasefire. Earlier this week, Armenia’s foreign minister resigned. Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan has rejected calls to resign after thousands of demonstrators called on him to step down.
If the ceasefire holds, it will mark the end of the deadliest fighting in Nagorno-Karabakh since a war over the enclave killed tens of thousands in the early 1990s. So far, the total death toll for the latest battle is unknown. On Wednesday, Armenia’s health minister said a new tally showed that 2,425 ethnic Armenian soldiers died in the clashes. Azerbaijan has yet to disclose its military casualties.
It seems the Armenians ran out of steam well before Soros could arrange an ‘American’ NATO intervention.
Not that Plan B wouldn’t have worked out for him as well, whatever that may have been.
What can you possibly mean here? The power behind the war is Turkey, arguably the second-most important member of NATO. NATO bases interceptor missile radar sites, nuclear bombs, advanced Patriot interceptor batteries, ground/attack forces in Turkey and has not criticized it in any way for its involvement in the new genocide in Karabakh. The bribed poltroon Putin has just sold out another former Russian ally – maybe the last that was left, Pashingyan notwithstanding. As a part of Azerbaijan/Turkey (“one nation, two states”) Karabakh now becomes NATO territory.
… Well, okay… that makes the assumption that Turkey is a fully-accepted happy NATO member.
They are not; there are disputes stemming from Turkey’s rebuffed entry into the EU, conflict with France, Israel, and Cyprus over Mediterranean nat gas deposits, expansion into Libya, etc..
Turkey is to NATO elites, an uppity brown country presuming too much independence.
“How Erodgan-led Turkey went from NATO ally to liability” – David Romano, ArabNews, Se. 23, 2020.
https://www.arabnews.com/node/1739061/middle-east
Armenia was flipped pro-Western colour revolution back in 2018 by current PM Nikol Pashinyan. Russia’s grip on the region is tenuous and they are far more concerned with securing Syria.
https://english.iswnews.com/16166/karabakh-war-the-graveyard-of-national-governments-will-the-pro-western-government-of-pashinyan-be-overthrown/
Turkey and Russia would have benefited. Armenia’s pro-Western government is in tatters and discredited. While Turkey’s hand in Azerbaijan is strengthened, Russia respects Turkish independence as a legit geopolitical player far more so than the rest of NATO.
Turkey is barely in Western orbit as is; the relationship deteriorated into a relationship of convenience. Russia does not see an independent Turkey as a threat.
For Heaven’s sake, Armenia cannot cede any part of Nagorno-Karabakh. They are separate entities. Why sow confusion like that? Karabakh losing 2,425 soldiers is the equivalent of the U.S. losing 6 million soldiers in a war (as a percentage of the total population). As the whole world sat back and watched it happen, especially the always despicable Vladimir Putin.