Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan said he has signed a deal with the leaders of Azerbaijan and Russia to end the military conflict over the Nagorno-Karabakh region on Tuesday morning local time after more than a month of bloodshed.
A Kremlin spokesman confirmed the news, Russian agencies reported. There was no official immediate reaction from Baku, the Azerbaijani capital.
Arayik Harutyunyan, the leader of the Nagorno-Karabakh region, said on Facebook that he gave agreement "to end the war as soon as possible."
Russian President Vladimir Putin said in a statement on Tuesday that Russian peacekeepers will be deployed along the front line in Nagorno-Karabakh following an agreement to stop military conflict between Armenian and Azerbaijani forces.
He said he hoped the agreements "will set up necessary conditions for long-lasting and full-scale settlement of the crisis over Nagorno-Karabakh."
The declaration has followed six weeks of heavy fighting and advancement by the Azerbaijan's forces. Baku said on Monday it had seized dozens more settlements in Nagorno-Karabakh, a day after proclaiming victory in the battle for the enclave's strategically positioned second-largest city.
"The decision is made basing on the deep analyses of the combat situation and in discussion with best experts of the field," Pashinyan said on social media.
"This is not a victory, but there is not defeat until you consider yourself defeated. We will never consider ourselves defeated, and this shall become a new start of an era of our national unity and rebirth."
The fighting had raised fears of a wider regional war, with Turkey supporting its ally, Azerbaijan, while Russia has a defence pact with Armenia and a military base there.
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Azerbaijan says it has since Sept. 27 retaken much of the land in and around Nagorno-Karabakh that it lost in a 1991-94 war that killed an estimated 30,000 people and forced many more from their homes. Armenia has denied the extent of Azerbaijan's territorial gains.
