In the evening of 9 November 2020 a ceasefire agreement (3)was signed in Moscow, facilitated by the Russian Federation, but with Turkey also being kept informed. The three signatories were Russian President Vladimir Putin, Nikol Pashinyan, the prime minister of Armenia, and Ilham Aliev, the president of Azerbaijan. The agreement prescribed the immediate cessation of armed hostilities along the current line of contact. This prevented the complete destruction of the surviving Armenian forces, whose losses were staggering. The ceasefire ordered the swift return of the three Armenian-occupied districts around Nagorno-Karabakh to Azerbaijan, which had not yet been seized by the Azerbaijani forces during the war. At the same time, some 70% of the territory of the former Nagorno-Karabakh Autonomous Oblast (NKAO) was to remain under Armenian control, as the rest had already been taken over by the Azeri military by 9 November.