on 16 April, the so-called Russian peacekeeping contingent began to leave the territory of Nagorno-Karabakh. It was sent there after the end of the war between Armenia and Azerbaijan in November 2020.
For four years, the Russian military had been a source of resentment on both sides of the conflict. Armenians complained that the “peacekeepers” allowed Azerbaijani soldiers to violate the ceasefire and fire on the positions of Karabakh separatists.
The Azerbaijani public was dissatisfied with the fact that the Russians were indulging the separatists, supplying them with weapons instead of disbanding them.
“By and large, the Russian peacekeepers in Karabakh had no mandate, i.e. there was no document that would regulate their activities. There was only a trilateral agreement on the deployment of peacekeepers,”
– an Azerbaijani journalist told Komersant ukrainskyi azerbaijani journalist Zaur Nurmamedov, who covers the Karabakh issue, told Kommersant from Baku.
According to him, the so-called “peacekeepers” were in fact in Azerbaijan illegally, as, according to the country’s Constitution, the deployment of foreign troops or contingent must be agreed with the parliament, and there was no such ratified document.
His colleague, the German columnist for the popular BILD magazine, Julian Ripke, pointed to the possibility that Russia could move its troops, which it has withdrawn from Nagorno-Karabakh, to fight in Ukraine.
The fact is that the “peacekeepers” were armed with dozens of new BTR-82A armoured personnel carriers, which the Russians lack on the Ukrainian front.
Colonel of the Armed Forces Reserve, military expert Oleg Zhdanov agrees with this thesis.
According to him, the Russian invaders in Ukraine really lack these APCs.
“Our intelligence has data that the first echelon of 49 APCs has already arrived on the territory of the Southern Military District of the Russian Federation, which is the main supplier of both personnel and weapons for military aggression against Ukraine. They simply lack armoured vehicles, especially in the Bakhmut and Novopavlivka directions,” he said in a commentary to our publication,
– he said in a comment to our publication.
Zhdanov notes that the second echelon is expected to arrive, which is 50 armoured personnel carriers.
The expert claims that all the equipment from Karabakh has already been allocated to the combined arms armies down to brigades.
The reserve colonel explains that the so-called “peacekeepers” are two thousand Russian paratroopers who will be deployed to the hottest spots of the frontline in Donbas.
“I have no doubt that they will fight here,” he said,
– he said.
Having got rid of Russian troops, Azerbaijan has skilfully used the war between Russia and Ukraine to its advantage. Although Baku supports the territorial integrity of Ukraine, it does not provide military assistance to the Ukrainian armed forces. At the same time, Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev met with Volodymyr Zelenskyy at the Munich Security Conference in February this year, where he said that his country understands the occupation and violation of territorial integrity very well.
Joshua Kuchera, an American journalist specialising in covering security issues in Central Asia, the Caucasus and the Middle East, believes that Azerbaijan is the only winner of the Russian-Ukrainian war. He wrote about this in his article, which describes how Baku is trying to balance relations with both Russia and Ukraine.
“Azerbaijan has long sought to balance its relations with various partners, and its growing influence after the war in Ukraine has only strengthened its ability to do so,”
– Kuchera believes.
However, the Armed Forces of Ukraine are ready to meet the Russian “guests” from Karabakh. This was stated in a comment to Komersant ukrainskyi this was stated by the commander of the artillery battery of the 23rd Separate Airborne Brigade of the Armed Forces of Ukraine, a Ukrainian serviceman of Azerbaijani origin, Murad Nasirov.
“We will fight anyone who comes to the Ukrainian lands and we will destroy the enemy to the end,” he said,
– he assured.