Azerbaijan says Armenia agrees 'historic' return of four villages

Armenia has agreed to return to Azerbaijan four villages situated on theirshared border, Azerbaijani Foreign Ministry spokesperson Aykhan Hajizada said on Friday.

Hajizada posted on X that the four villages had been held by Armenia since the early 1990s and their return was a "long-awaited historic event."

Preliminary agreement reached

Armenia's Foreign Ministry said in a statement that the two countries had reached a preliminary agreement on four sections of their disputed border.

Azerbaijan has said the return of the villages is a necessary precondition for a peace deal to end more than three decades of conflict between the two countries, which were both part of the Soviet Union.

Friday's agreement, at a meeting chaired by deputy prime ministers of both countries, was the clearest sign yet of progress between the two sides.

After two major wars between them, momentum shifted dramatically in favor of Azerbaijan last September when its forces staged a lightning offensive to regain control of the Nagorno-Karabakh region, where ethnic Armenians had enjoyed de facto independence since the mid-1990s.

Allegations of ethnic cleansing

Armenia as well as international observers have accused Azerbaijan of carrying out an ethnic cleansing campaign in the ethnic-Armenian territories captured in September.

Azerbaijan says it has pledged to ensure all residents’ safety and security, regardless of national or ethnic origin, and that it has not forced ethnic Armenians to leave Karabakh, though there has been a mass exodus of at least three-quarters of the region's ethnic Armenians since the territory changed hands.

In 2021, Armenia brought a case against Azerbaijan at the International Criminal Court (ICJ) accusing Azerbaijan of glorifying racism against Armenians, allowing hate speech against Armenians and destroying Armenian cultural sites - all accusations that Baku denies.

Jerusalem Post Staff contributed to this report.