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NATO member Turkey, Azerbaijan’s main supporter and arms supplier, said the deal had secured important gains for its ally

Some Azeris regretted fighting had ended before Azerbaijan controlled all of Nagorno-Karabakh and were wary of the arrival of peacekeepers from Russia, which dominated the region in Soviet times.

We were about to gain the whole of Nagorno-Karabakh back,” said 52-year-old Kiamala Aliyeva. “The agreement is very vague I don’t trust Armenia and I don’t trust Russia even more.”

rance, which has long mediated in the conflict with Russia and the United States, said any lasting agreement must take into account Armenia’s interests.

Appealing to Armenians to see the deal as starting an era of national unity, he said: “This is not a victory, but there is no defeat until you consider yourself defeated.”

Russia, which has a defence pact with Armenia and a military base there, is likely to hail the deal as a sign it is still the main arbiter in the energy-producing South Caucasus,

Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said there had been no agreement on deploying any Turkish peacekeepers in Nagorno-Karabakh, but the Turkish military will help staff a joint monitoring centre with Russian forces.

Putin said displaced people would be able to return to Nagorno-Karabakh and prisoners of war and bodies of those killed would be exchanged. All economic and transport links in the area would be reopened.

Surprisingly, Iran is not happy with Azerbaijan’s victory. As openly as the Iranians ever do, they’ve threatened to use force against any changes to the borders of Armenia. Iran, a millenniums-old civilization central to a whole continent, cannot tolerate being walled off behind a chain of Turkish dependencies. India, similarly, is on Armenia’s side and has been sending a regular supply of weapons. One spur for such support, no doubt, is Pakistan’s joining the Azeri-Turkish alliance. In the jargon of American lawyers, this opens a whole new can of worms.

Then there’s Russia, whose absence from the denouement in Nagorno-Karabakh was striking. Even after the 1990s, Moscow still remained by far the biggest supplier of weapons to both Armenia and Azerbaijan. Their economies and societies, above all the elites and their corruption networks, were until very recently molded together. What we are seeing now, as both nations slip out of Russia’s orbit, might be the second round of Soviet collapse.

Once again, Armenia started the shift. In spring 2018 a tremendously hopeful uprising, reminiscent of 1989 in Central Europe, forced the post-communist elites to surrender power. Vladimir Putin was visibly displeased to meet Nikol Pashinyan, the anticorruption journalist and street rebel elected Armenia’s premier by an overwhelming majority. Mr. Pashinyan admittedly had neither political team nor experience; he is learning statesmanship on the job, often at great expense to his nation. Yet he managed to significantly reduce corruption, helping to unlock the legendary entrepreneurship of Armenians. Amid all the grim news, the Armenian economy, led by the I.T. sector, is registering impressive growth.

History has a habit of serving the same lessons with changed variables. In 1988, it was the dreamer Gorbachev stumbling over Nagorno-Karabakh that unwittingly shattered the world order. Today, Mr. Putin could become the second, much darker incarnation of the Kremlin aggrandizer going awry on all fronts. The consequences — from emboldening international aggression to reanimating the West under the banner of NATO — will be profound. As events in Nagorno-Karabakh show, the fragile post-Cold War order is giving way to something else entirely.

The Caucasus might seem strange and distant. Yet it might prove the wedge that turns the fortunes of world order. Trieste, Smyrna, Sarajevo, Danzig and Crimea were all such places. Let us not have to relearn history at the cost of yet another ethnic cleansing

Iran had proposed a leading role in peace negotiations for countries in the region. Russia, it said, would be one of these countries.

Negotiations have for decades been led by Russia, France and the United States in their roles as co-chairs of a panel known as the Minsk Group of the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE), a security and rights watchdog.

in which Turkey wants a bigger role.

The ethnic Armenian-controlled Nagorno-Karabakh defence ministry says 1,177 of its troops have been killed since Sept. 27.

Russia has estimated 5,000 deaths on both sides.

“Azeri armed forces are not violating the humanitarian ceasefire,” defence ministry spokesman Vagif Dargiahly said.

The flare-up of fighting is the worst since a 1991-94 war over Nagorno-Karabakh that killed about 30,000.

it is close to Azeri gas and oil pipelines to Europe, and Turkey and Russia risk being dragged in. Russia has a defence pact with Armenia, while Turkey is allied with Azerbaijan.

Turkey is not involved in the mediation, which has been led by France, Russia and the United States.

The conflict is also worsening the spread of COVID-19 across both countries,

Armenia’s new cases had doubled over the past 14 days as of Monday, while new infections were up approximately 80% over the past week in Azerbaijan,

Martial law has also been declared in some regions of Azerbaijan.

The conflict in the Caucasus Mountains has remained unresolved for more than three decades, with periodic bouts of fighting.

Iran, which borders both Azerbaijan and Armenia, offered to broker peace talks.

an attack on civilian settlements in Nagorno-Karabakh, including the regional capital Stepanakert, began at 08:10 local time (04:10 GMT) on Sunday.

Armenia's government declared martial law and total military mobilisation,

Warning that the region was on the brink of a "large-scale war", and accusing Turkey of "aggressive behaviour", he urged the international community to unite to prevent any further destabilisation.

Azerbaijanis are a predominantly Turkic people with whom Turkey has close ties, although unlike Turks, most Azerbaijanis are Shia, not Sunni, Muslims. Turkey does not have relations with Armenia, a mainly Orthodox Christian country which has historically looked to Russia for support.

Iran, a mainly Shia state, has a large ethnic Azerbaijani community but maintains good relations with Russia. They and Turkey, a Nato member, back opposing sides in Syria's ongoing civil war.

the ethnic divisions in Armenia and Azerbaijan have become even starker

Yet in the immediate aftermath of war, precisely because a peace effort is underway, foreign governments and international peacekeepers are unusually well-placed to intervene. Unlike during armed conflict, there is also a chance for international mediators and local communities to work together to prevent attacks before the damage is done.

In Nagorno-Karabakh, too, cultural reconciliation is still possible. Despite the dismal record of the past three decades, both sides have demonstrated awareness of — and admiration for — heritage that is not their own. In 2019, Armenians restored a prominent 19th-century mosque in Shusha (though they pointedly failed to note its previous use by Azerbaijani Muslims). And in his recent address, Mr. Aliyev acknowledged the importance of the region’s churches — even as he denied their Armenian origin.

The ban will mean that any activities or meetings by the group could lead to fines or imprisonment, French Interior Minister Gerald Darmanin said.

Tensions between France and Turkey also intensified recently after French President Emmanuel Macron's pledge to defend secular values and fight radical Islam.

It came after French teacher Samuel Paty was murdered after showing his students controversial images of the Prophet Muhammad.

The U.N. report goes on: "The lethal autonomous weapons systems were programmed to attack targets without requiring data connectivity between the operator and the munition: in effect, a true 'fire, forget and find' capability."

Azerbaijan used armed drones to gain a major advantage over Armenia in recent fighting for control of the Nagorno-Karabakh region. Just last month, the Israel Defense Forces reportedly used drones to drop tear gas on protesters in the occupied West Bank, while Hamas launched loitering munitions — so-called kamikaze drones — into Israel.

While this incident may or may not represent the first battlefield killing by an autonomous drone, the idea of such a weapon is disquieting to many.

Several thousand opposition supporters staged a rival protest on a different square in the capital. Crowds there could be seen cheering and clapping as a fighter jet flew overhead in footage circulated by Russia’s RIA news agency.