Everything that happened in Nagorno-Karabakh in late September was inevitable after the recognition of Azerbaijan’s sovereignty over that territory, Russian President Vladimir Putin said at a question-and-answer session on October 5 at the annual Valdai Forum.
“It was only a matter of time - when and in what way Azerbaijan would establish constitutional order there within the framework of the Constitution of the Azerbaijani state. How else to react to this? This was the inevitable consequence of what was done in Prague and Brussels. Therefore, [President of the European Council Charles] Michel and his colleagues should have thought it before, they started to persuading, apparently somewhere behind the scenes, the Prime Minister of Armenia, Mr. Pashinyan, to take such a step; they should have thought about the fate of the Armenians of Karabakh,” Putin said.
To note, mediated talks between Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan and Azerbaijani Presdient Ilham Aliyev took place in Prague in October 2022 and Brussels in May 2023. As a result of both negotiations, the parties confirmed their commitment to the Almaty Declaration, which establishes the borders of post-Soviet countries and secures their inviolability. The Almaty Declaration was signed by all countries of the former USSR back in 1991.
On September 19, 2023, following 9 months of a strict blockade, the Azerbaijani armed forces attacked the population of Nagorno-Karabakh, as a result of which about 100 thousand residents left their homes within 2-3 days. A number of international organizations, including the European Parliament, Human Rights Watch, and the Lemkin Institute for the Prevention of Genocide, recognized these events as ethnic cleansing and a violation of international law.
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