MOSCOW (Reuters) – Russia has sent troops to reinforce its border guards in Armenia and secure a peace settlement with Azerbaijan over Nagorno-Karabakh, the Federal Security Service head said on Friday.
The deployment was made at the request of Armenia to maintain peace in Nagorno-Karabakh, FSS chief Alexander Bortnikov told Russian President Vladimir Putin at a conference via videolink.
The mission involves 188 servicemen and military hardware.
Russian border guards stayed in Armenia after the collapse of the Soviet Union under terms of a 1992 treaty between the two countries.
Russia deployed nearly 2,000 peacekeepers to Nagorno-Karabakh in the last two weeks after a peace deal that halted six weeks of fighting between Azeri and ethnic Armenian forces, locking in place territorial gains by Azerbaijan.
(Reporting by Maria Tsvetkova; Editing by Angus MacSwan)
