Ethnic Armenian forces have agreed to a Russian ceasefire plan, 24 hours after Azerbaijan began an offensive in the breakaway region of Nagorno-Karabakh.
Under the agreement, confirmed by both sides and effective from 09:00 GMT on Wednesday, separatist forces will disband and disarm, and talks on the region's future and the ethnic Armenians who live there will start on Thursday.
The outcome would appear to pave the way for Azerbaijan to integrate around 120,000 ethnic Armenians into its society – a prospect some Armenians say they fear – and to take full control of a mountainous area that has been at the center of two wars since the 1991 fall of the Soviet Union, Reuters said.
