(Bloomberg) -- Russia is pulling out troops deployed as peacekeepers in Nagorno-Karabakh, more than six months after the region’s Armenian population fled in the wake of a lightning military attack by Azerbaijan.

Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov on Wednesday said Russian forces had started to withdraw from the region, according to the Interfax news service, confirming an earlier Azerbaijani media report.

Russian President Vladimir Putin sent almost 2,000 troops to the long-disputed region to maintain security as part of a truce he brokered in November 2020 to halt a 44-day war between Azerbaijan and Armenia that killed thousands on both sides.

Azerbaijan took over part of Nagorno-Karabakh in that fighting and regained seven surrounding districts that had been occupied by Armenian troops for nearly a quarter of a century.

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It mounted a military attack in September last year to take control of the rest of the region, prompting an exodus of more than 100,000 Armenians living in Nagorno-Karabakh in the course of a few days.

The assault followed a lengthy Azerbaijani blockade of a road linking Nagorno-Karabakh’s main city Stepanakert to Armenia, even though the Russian forces were mandated to control the so-called Lachin corridor as part of their deployment.

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The peacekeeping troops were meant to remain in the region for five years under the deal brokered by Putin. But with the territory emptied of its Armenian population, who feared for their security and fled to neighboring Armenia despite appeals from Azerbaijan President Ilham Aliyev for them to remain, the Russian forces were left with nothing to do.

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