A planned prisoner exchange announced almost a week ago has taken place, with Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan announcing on Facebook that 32 servicemen captured by Azerbaijan since 2020 are now back in Armenia. Initial Azerbaijani reports stated the exchange for two captured Azerbaijani prisoners would take place along the Ijevan-Kazakh stretch of the Armenia-Azerbaijan border. Their release was part of a deal announced last week in a rare joint statement between the two countries, which also included Armenia dropping its veto of Azerbaijan hosting next year’s COP29 UN Climate Change Conference.
As the days went on and Azerbaijan was announced as COP29’s host with no prisoners released, the Armenian public began to question whether Azerbaijan would hold up its end of the bargain. However as Foreign Minister Ararat Mirzoyan told the outlet Azatutyun earlier today: “there were two components: the prisoner exchange, the release, and there was the climate conference component. And that conference officially ended yesterday, and today we can wait for the implementation of the second component.” Within hours Pashinyan announced their release.
Unlike in previous prisoner exchanges, this one was said to have been the result of direct negotiations between Armenia and Azerbaijan without third-party mediation. The agreement came just one day after senior US State Department official James O’Brien visited Azerbaijan for high-level talks he described as “positive and constructive.” In addition, Yerevan and Baku said they “reaffirm their intention to normalize relations and negotiate a peace treaty based on respect for the principles of sovereignty and territorial integrity” and pledged to review “more confidence-building measures in the near future.”
The exchange however still leaves at least 23 Armenian captives in Azerbaijani jails, including high profile cases such as Artsakh former presidents, former state minister and philanthropist Ruben Vardanyan, and 68-year old civilian Vagif Khachatryan who was kidnapped in July from a Red Cross convoy.
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