Under the agreement announced on December 7, Azerbaijan is to free 32 Armenian soldiers and civilians in exchange for Armenia’s release of two Azerbaijani servicemen and support for Baku’s bid to host the COP29 climate summit next year. A senior Armenian lawmaker suggested on December 8 that the prisoner swap will be carried out within “hours or days.”
Parliament speaker Alen Simonian on Tuesday declined not give possible dates for the repatriation of the captives. He said only that the deal struck as a result of direct Armenian-Azerbaijani negotiations remains in force.
“We are waiting,” Simonian told reporters. “I think that we will have information very soon.”
Vagharshak Hakobian, another lawmaker representing Armenia’s ruling Civil Contract party, said he hopes that the deal will not be scrapped.
The United Nations officially announced on Monday that Azerbaijan will host next year’s global climate summit. In line with the December 7 deal, Armenia did not object to that decision.
The Azerbaijani government publicized late last week the list of the 32 Armenian captives that will be repatriated by it. Most of them were taken prisoner in Nagorno-Karabakh in December 2020 just weeks after a Russian-brokered ceasefire stopped the last Armenian-Azerbaijani war.
Also on the list is Gagik Voskanian, an Armenian army reservist who was mobilized a few weeks before straying into Azerbaijani territory in August this year in unclear circumstances. An Azerbaijani court convicted Voskanian of “terrorism” just hours before the announcement of the prisoner swap.
Voskanian’s mother, Ashkhen Avetisian, told RFE/RL’s Armenian Service that she also does not know when he will return home.
“I contacted a Defense Ministry official and was told, ‘Keep waiting, we too don’t know anything, everything will be alright,’” she said.
The Azerbaijani soldiers to be freed by Yerevan were detained in April after crossing into Armenia’s Syunik province from Azerbaijan’s Nakhichevan exclave. One of them was charged with murdering a Syunik resident the day before his detention. Armenia’s Court of Appeals sentenced him to life imprisonment last week.
Azerbaijan’s prosecutor-general expressed confidence on Tuesday that they will be set free. But he did not give any dates.