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Situation after ceasefire violation in Nagorno-Karabakh normalizes - commander

According to Lieutenant General Rustam Muradov, Russian peacekeepers monitor the situation round-the-clock and maintain contacts with both the Armenian and Azerbaijani sides

MOSCOW, December 13. /TASS/. Russian peacekeepers suppressed a ceasefire violation in Nagorno-Karabakh on Friday. By now, the situation in the region has normalized, Lieutenant General Rustam Muradov, commander of the Russian peacekeeping contingent in the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict zone, said on Sunday.

"A ceasefire violation was reported on December 11 near the settlements of Htsaberd and Hin Taher of the Gadrutsky district. It was stopped by the Russian peacekeeping contingent," he said, adding that by now "the situation in the area has normalized."

According to Muradov, Russian peacekeepers monitor the situation round-the-clock and maintain contacts with both the Armenian and Azerbaijani sides.

On Saturday, the Russian defense ministry reported the first ceasefire violation in Nagorno-Karabakh since the cessation of hostilities and deployment of Russian peacekeepers in early November. The incident took place in the Gadrutsky district. Baku and Yerevan blamed one another for staging this provocation. According to a Russian defense ministry’s daily bulletin, the ceasefire is being observed along the entire contact line.

Renewed clashes between Azerbaijan and Armenia erupted on September 27, with intense battles raging in the disputed region of Nagorno-Karabakh. The area experienced flare-ups of violence in the summer of 2014, in April 2016 and this past July.

On November 9, Russian President Vladimir Putin, Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev and Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan signed a joint statement on a complete ceasefire in Nagorno-Karabakh starting from November 10. Under the document, the Azerbaijani and Armenian sides stopped at the positions that they had held and Russian peacekeepers were deployed to the region.