A monument to the peacekeeper was unveiled on Wednesday on the territory of a Russian military camp near Stepanakert in honor of the first anniversary of the Russian peacekeeping contingent's entry into Nagorno-Karabakh, a TASS correspondent reports.
Lieutenant General Rustam Muradov, deputy commander of the Southern military district, and Gennady Anashkin, commander of the Russian peacekeeping contingent in Nagorno-Karabakh, took part in the ceremony.
The monument, cast in bronze, depicts a peacekeeper in full combat gear, with a Kalashnikov assault rifle on his shoulder, hugging a fragile girl who gives him a bunch of flowers. The prototype of the monument was a real participant of the peacekeeping mission.
The laying of a time capsule with a message to future generations was also part of the ceremony.
The situation in the conflict zone over Nagorno-Karabakh escalated on September 27, 2020, when active fighting broke out there. On November 9 of the same year, the presidents of Azerbaijan and Russia Ilham Aliyev and Vladimir Putin, as well as the Armenian prime minister Nikol Pashinyan signed a joint statement on the complete cessation of hostilities in the region. According to the document, the Azerbaijani and Armenian sides stopped at the occupied positions, a number of districts passed under Baku's control, and Russian peacekeepers were deployed along the line of contact and the Lachin corridor. After the deployment of peacekeepers, the situation in Karabakh stabilized, and tens of thousands of residents who had left their homes during the hostilities returned.
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Photo: Alexander Ryumin / TASS
Based on materials from TASS