Ethnic Armenian authorities in Azerbaijan’s breakaway region of Nagorno-Karabakh agreed today to allow aid shipments from territory controlled by Bakufor the first time in decades, in exchange for the restoration of road links with Armenia.

The deal, first reported by the Armenian state news agency Armenpress and confirmed by Baku, appears to at least partially satisfy a decades-old demand by Azerbaijan to restore transport links between areas controlled by Baku and the Nagorno-Karabakh enclave.

Armenpress cited the Karabakh authorities as saying that they “decided to allow the access of Russian goods to our Republic through the city of Askeran’, referring to a town in Karabakh near the front line with Azerbaijan.

“At the same time, an agreement was reached to resume humanitarian aid missions by Russian peacekeepers and the International Committee of the Red Cross along the Lachin Corridor“, Armenpress underlined. The deal comes as the enclave faces “serious humanitarian problems”, it said.

Hikmet Hajiyev, a foreign policy adviser to Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev, confirmed to Reuters that the roads would open simultaneously, while an Azerbaijani checkpoint would remain on the road to Armenia. He reiterated Baku’s long-standing position that the enclave’s separatist authorities must be disbanded and disarmed.

Nagorno-Karabakh is internationally recognized as a territory of Azerbaijan, but is controlled by its population of approx. 120,000 Armenians.