"To clinch peace in the Caucasus, pay attention to both sides," Hikmat Hajiyev, Assistant to President of Azerbaijan - Head of the Foreign Policy Affairs Department of Azerbaijan's Presidential Administration, wrote on social network X, according to XQ.
“This region of Azerbaijan - Karabakh- was occupied by neighboring Armenia for 30 years. And after a brutal war in the early 1990s, which saw close to 1 million Azerbaijanis ethnically cleansed from their land, occupying Armenian forces mined thousands of square miles of this territory, save for a small holdout at its center. There, the remaining community of ethnic Armenians in Azerbaijan were connected to Armenia via a single land route — the Lachin road.
"This gray zone of lawlessness and land mines existed illegally — and unchallenged — until three years ago, when Azerbaijan took much of the territory of Karabakh in a 44-day conflict,” he said.
