Ukrainian TV channel talks about revival of Azerbaijan’s liberated lands
VIDEO

KARABAKH  05 February 2023 - 10:15

Ukraine's “5 Kanal” TV released a report on how Azerbaijan is restoring its territories liberated from Armenian occupation following the Second Karabakh War in 2020.

The restoration of Azerbaijan’s liberated territories is an experience for Ukraine, according to the author.

The story says two years have passed since the end of the Second Karabakh War of 2020, which resulted in more than 8,000 military casualties on both sides in 44 days of fighting.

“Azerbaijan celebrated the victory it had waited nearly 30 years for. How did the Azerbaijanis manage to restore historical justice, and what lessons can Ukraine draw from this? Both demining and construction continue in the de-occupied territories of Karabakh:

Azerbaijan has been rebuilding the reclaimed territories of Karabakh for two years now. The place has turned into a huge construction site. They are building roads, laying new asphalt, restoring old mosques, and building bridges. Two years ago, bulldozers were operating and clearing the area for runways. Now it is an airport. Baku is not turning these territories into monuments to the bloody past but is building the future here. There is a real construction boom in the liberated territories. But to start the construction, we had to demine this territory, and it is thousands of hectares of land dotted with mines and unexploded ordnance,” the video says.

It adds that in the Aghdam district alone, more than 68,000 hectares of land had been liberated. Of these, to date, almost 17,000 hectares have been cleared of landmines.

In other words, in two years of daily work, the deminers managed to clear only one-fourth of the Aghdam district. Baku has involved not only state organisations but also private companies in this process.

"There was a line of trenches here. So, apart from the mines, the ground was strewn with shell casings and shrapnel from shells. It was raining, and all this metal was hiding under the ground. Now, when you walk with a metal detector, it beeps almost every inch. We demine by hand; we have to check. It takes a very long time," Azerbaijan Mine Action Agency official Khalig Zulfugarov told “5 Kanal”.

The author adds that Azerbaijani sappers use dogs and machinery to plough over hundreds of hectares of deadly land with giant trawls.

“The conflict over Karabakh between Armenia and Azerbaijan dates back to the Soviet era in the late 1980s. Its active phase lasted until 1994. Since then, the region has resembled a dormant volcano that exploded from time to time but did flare up again in the autumn of 2020,” the video says.

Caliber.Az