Russia begins withdrawing peacekeeping forces from Karabakh, now under full Azerbaijan control

MOSCOW (AP) — President Vladimir Putin’s spokesman on Wednesday said Russian forces are being withdrawn from Azerbaijan’s Karabakh region, where they have been stationed as peacekeepers since the end of a war in 2020. In a conference call with journalists, Dmitry Peskov confirmed reports of the withdrawal but did not give further details. The Karabakh region had been under the control of ethnic Armenian forces backed by Armenia’s military since 1994. But Azerbaijan took control of sizeable parts of the region in a six-week war in 2020, which ended with an agreement to deploy Russian peacekeepers in parts of the region that Azerbaijan did not control. Three years later, Azerbaijan took control of the remainder of Karabakh in a lightning offensive.