Presidential aide: Attempts to impose status quo based on occupation of Azerbaijan’s lands failed
By Aisha Jabbarova
Presidential Aide Hikmat Hajiyev has said that Azerbaijan was able to change the status quo that was based on the occupation of the country’s territories.
“The [Azerbaijani] martyrs, at the cost of their lives, destroyed the geopolitical games, which for years have been trying to impose the status quo on Azerbaijan based on the occupation on the principle of "fait accompli", Presidential Aide Hikmat Hajiyev wrote on Twitter today.
“Our lands have been liberated from occupation. Shusha, the heart of Karabakh, has been liberated,” Hajiyev wrote.
The clashes between Armenia and Azerbaijan resumed after Armenia launched large-scale attacks on Azerbaijani forces and civilians on September 27. Five Azerbaijani civilians were killed in the first day of the Armenian attacks. Ninety-three Azerbaijani civilians were killed in Armenian's indiscriminate attacks on Azerbaijani civilians. Azerbaijan launched counter-offensive operations that ended in the liberation of over 300 settlements, villages. Azerbaijan also liberated five city centres and the historic Shusha city that was liberated on November 8.
The 44 days of war ended with the Russian brokered peace deal signed on November 9 by the Azerbaijan, Russian and Armenian leaders. The peace agreement became effective on November 10 and envisages deoccupation of Azerbaijan’s Kalbajar, Aghdam and Lachin regions by December 1 as well as the return of Azerbaijani IDPs to Azerbaijan’s Nagorno-Karabakh and the seven adjacent regions under the control of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees.
The peace agreement ended the 30-years-old conflict between Baku and Yerevan over Azerbaijan’s Nagorno-Karabakh region that along with the seven adjacent districts came under the occupation of Armenian armed forces in the war in the early 1990s. For about three decades, Armenia failed to implement the UN Security Council resolutions demanding the withdrawal of the Armenian troops, which was the main obstacle to the resolution of the conflict.