On 14 December, the process of swapping prisoners of war (POWs) under the “all for all” principle between Armenia and Azerbaijan officially began.
44 Armenian citizens and 12 Azerbaijani citizens returned to their countries' of origin after the exchange took place. Armenian officials said a Russian plane carrying 44 Armenian prisoners landed at Yerevan’s Erebuni airport late in the evening. It was not immediately clear if the group included only soldiers or also Karabakh Armenian civilians who were held in Azerbaijani captivity. “Additional information about the returned prisoners will be provided later on,” Deputy Prime Minister Tigran Avinian said in a Facebook post that announced the start of the prisoner swap.
The Azerbaijani State Security Service emphasised that Azerbaijan constantly negotiated with the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC), Russian peacekeeping forces and other international organisations. The statement also said that they took all possible measures of the exchange of the prisoners. Among the returned prisoners were the two Azerbaijani citizens Dilgam Asgarov and Shabaz Guliyev who were detained by the Nagorno-Karabakh de facto authorities in 2014 in the Kalbajar region.
