Azerbaijani Forces Take Over Strategic Town Linking Armenia With Nagorno-Karabakh

BAKU -- Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev says his country’s armed forces have taken control over the key town of Lachin, which links the breakaway region of Nagorno-Karabakh with Armenia, that had been under the control of Russian peacekeepers since November 2020.

Aliyev wrote on Twitter on August 26 that Azerbaijani armed forces also now control the villages of Zabux and Sus in the Lachin district.

Armenia lost control over parts of the breakaway region and seven adjacent districts, including Lachin, as part of the Russian-brokered cease-fire after a six-week war over Nagorno-Karabakh broke out in 2020, leaving more than 6,500 dead. An estimated 2,000 Russian troops have been deployed to monitor the situation.

The peace agreement signed by Yerevan, Baku, and Moscow to end the 2020 war said that the 5-kilometer-wide Lachin corridor, including the town of Lachin, would remain under Russian peacekeeping control until the construction of a new route connecting Armenia with Nagorno-Karabakh is outlined in three years.

Earlier this month, Baku forcibly took control of several strategic heights near the disputed region, and Aliyev said in a public statement that people who "illegally settled" in Lachin, Zabux, and Sus should leave the area "on their own will."

He added that families of Azerbaijanis who had been forced to leave the territory 30 years ago would be returning.

Many ethnic Armenians in Lachin, Zabux, and Sus -- known as Berdzor, Aghavno, and Nerkin Sus by Armenians -- have left their homes in recent weeks after de facto officials of the disputed region said that Russian peacekeepers will leave the area by August 25 as the new route connecting Nagorno-Karabakh with Armenia will start functioning in early September.

Nagorno-Karabakh, which along with seven adjacent districts had been under ethnic Armenian control for nearly three decades prior to the war in 2020, is internationally recognized as part of Azerbaijan.