Nor Shen and Hin Shen villages of Artsakh’s (Nagorno-Karabakh) Shushi Region continue to be under Azerbaijani blockade.
In a conversation with Armenian News-NEWS.am, the mayor of Hin Shen, Samvel Sargsyan, said that the Russian peacekeepers have arrived and negotiations are underway. "The village is not subject to evacuation, and the people do not want to come out. As the situation was yesterday, so it is today. Russian peacekeepers have arrived, but the roads have not been [re]opened yet. We are waiting for [Rustam] Muradov [commander of the Russian peacekeeping force in Nagorno-Karabakh] to come; he must have made a decision. Let's see how the issue is resolved," he said.
According to Sargsyan, those roads of the community that have been closed must be reopened. "If this will be an Azerbaijani territory, let them come. But this is an Armenian territory, it is ancestral land," he added.
The mayor of Nor Shen, Davit Davtyan, told Armenian News-NEWS.am that Russian peacekeepers have not come to yet, and the village has been under siege for three days. "I am in the village, I am waiting for some representative of the government to come and say what we should do. We have been under blockade for three days, but no one wants to show up and say what we should do. (…). If these are Armenian lands, let them remove them [the Azerbaijanis]. If they do not remove [them], then it is not ours," he said.
According to Davtyan, if these villages also are handed over, Artsakh will no longer exist. "[The capital] Stepanakert will be cut off from Armenia by 50 kilometers. If there is an arrangement, a drawn map, then they should take it out. This is Armenian land, the Turk [Azerbaijani] has never entered here," he said, adding that the local population is in a desperate situation.
On November 9, Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan, Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev, and Russian President Vladimir Putin signed a joint statement on a complete cessation of hostilities— which Azerbaijan had launched on September 27—in and around Artsakh (Nagorno-Karabakh). Accordingly, Russian peacekeepers are deployed in the region to monitor the implementation of the ceasefire and the cessation of hostilities. But this statement also stipulates the handover of part of Artsakh lands to Azerbaijan.
