Armenia & Azerbaijan agree to swap all prisoners captured during Nagorno-Karabakh conflict

Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan on December 4 agreed to exchange the prisoners of war captured by Armenia’s army and the corpses of the soldiers and victims killed during the military confrontation in the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict. This came after Russia, which brokered a peace agreement, urged the warring sides Armenia and Azerbaijan to immediately restore the economic and transport ties in the Nagorno-Karabak region, and felicitate the return of the refugees. In a meeting with the Ambassador of Russia to Armenia Sergey Kopyrkin, Deputy Prime Minister of Armenia Tigran Avinyan discussed swapping of war captives, launching search operations for missing persons, and the retrieval of the bodies of the victims, the office of the deputy prime minister said in a release. 

Meanwhile, Azerbaijan confirmed its intention to conduct an exchange of prisoners with Armenia on the “all for all” principle, Azerbaijan’s State Commission on Prisoners of War, Hostages and Missing Persons said in a statement. “Azerbaijan stands for the exchange of prisoners and hostages according to the “all for all” principle,” adding, that the nation was in talks with Russia’s peacekeeping military command for handing the military officers that went missing in the combat zone. Avinyan had proposed to the Russian ambassador the “all for all” principle for the immediate return of any war fugitives and prisoners, should they appear during the conflicts in the future. Apart from the POWs, Avinyan appealed for humanitarian assistance to the Artsakh civilians. 

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500 soldiers' corpses to be identified

An ombudsman of the Nagorno-Karabakh Republic, or the Artsakh Republic, Artak Beglaryan, confirmed in a statement that as many as  60 Karabakh soldiers and 40 civilians were held captive during the war. "The crucial task is to return prisoners. There have been certain progress. In fact, the exchange has been negotiated on the principle of 'all for all’," Armenian PM Pashinyan said in a state press address. He added, that Armenia had expatriated nearly 600 soldiers' corpses, of which, at least 500 were yet to be identified. “ Identification is being conducted on bodies of the compatriots with the use of DNA testing. At least 135 bodies of servicemen have been identified and handed over to their relatives,” Armenian PM informed. “Our armed forces are being deployed along the border,” he stressed, adding, that the soldiers aimed to create a “real border” and not a frontline. 

Russian President Vladimir Putin, Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev, and Armenia's prime minister reached a truce to put end to hostilities and military conflict in the disputed enclave of Nagorno-Karabakh. Russia's defense ministry confirmed in a statement that 1,960 Russian peacekeepers flew from an airbase at Ulyanovsk to be deployed on the front line to guard the Lachin corridor. Both the Armenian and Azerbaijani military transferred the information about prisoners of war to the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC), according to sources of Sputnik agency. 

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(Image Credit: Twitter/Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan)