MOSCOW (Reuters) - Russian President Vladimir Putin has brokered a Nagorno-Karabakh peace deal that locks in territorial gains for Turkey-backed Azerbaijan. In doing so, he has thwarted a stronger Turkish presence in a region Moscow views as its backyard.Six weeks of heavy fighting between Azerbaijan and ethnic Armenian forces over the enclave have tested Moscow’s influence in the South Caucasus, a swath of the former Soviet Union it views as vital to defending its own southern flank. Three previous ceasefires, at least one of which was brokered by Moscow, fell apart. Azerbaijan accidentally shot down a Russian military helicopter, killing two. And Turkish President Tayyip Erdogan backed the Azeri offensive militarily and diplomatically and tried to gatecrash mediation efforts. In the end though, Putin has achieved a more than two decades Russian dream of inserting Russian peacekeepers into Nagorno-Karabakh on a renewable five-year basis and, for now, kept Turkish troops, who will instead help run a ceasefire monitoring centre outside the enclave, out. [nL1N2HW0GT] That expands Russia’s military footprint, putting an apparent end to geopolitical competition between Moscow and Ankara of the kind that continues to play out in Syria and Libya. With the wider deal, Putin has staved off a full Turkish-backed Azeri takeover of Nagorno-Karabakh however, which ethnic Armenians forces said was just days away from falling, and reaffirmed Russian influence in the region by brokering a deal which excluded Turkey as a signatory. “Today’s deal...in many ways addresses core Russian interests in the conflict, and is perhaps the best outcome (at least in short term) Moscow could get,” said Alexander Gabuev, a senior fellow at the Carnegie Moscow Center think tank. “Russia has put its 2,000 peacekeepers in Nagorno-Karabakh - something that Moscow wanted to do back in 1994, but was unable to. There will be no Turkish armed peacekeepers, which is very important for Moscow.”