“On March 25, a unit of the Azerbaijani Armed Forces crossed the line of contact in the Shusha district, violating” the agreement concluded in 2020, the Russian Defense Ministry said.
By Le Figaro with AFP
Published on 03/25/2023 at 20:26
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Azerbaijani soldiers. KAREN MINASYAN
Russia, a mediator in the conflict between Azerbaijan and Armenia, on Saturday accused Baku of violating the ceasefire agreement that ended the war between those two countries in 2020 by allowing its troops to cross the demarcation line. “On March 25, 2023 (Saturday), a unit of the Azerbaijani Armed Forces crossed the line of contact in the Shusha district, violating” the agreement reached in 2020, the Russian Defense Ministry said in a press release.
According to Moscow, Azerbaijani troops “occupied a height” and “started to establish a post”. Russian peacekeepers on the ground “are taking measures aimed at preventing the crisis situation from escalating and avoiding mutual provocations by opposite parties”. “The Azerbaijani side has been informed of the need to comply with the provisions (of the agreement), to take measures to stop engineering works and to withdraw the armed forces to the previously occupied positions,” the Russian ministry added.
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Frequent deadly brawls
Armenia and Azerbaijan, two former Soviet republics in the Caucasus, clashed in a brief war over control of the enclave of Nagorno-Karabakh in 2020. This conflict had resulted in an Armenian military defeat and a ceasefire agreement sponsored by Russia, which had peacekeepers stationed there. However, deadly clashes in Nagorno-Karabakh or on the border between the two countries continue to erupt regularly.
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Armenia has also been warning for several weeks of a “humanitarian crisis” in Karabakh over an Azerbaijani blockade that has led to shortages of medicines and food and power outages. Yerevan has accused Russian peacekeepers of not taking action to end the blockade. Nagorno-Karabakh is a mountainous region populated mostly by Armenians that split away from Azerbaijan after the collapse of the Soviet Union. Nagorno-Karabakh continues to poison Yerevan-Baku relations.
The first conflict in the early 1990s at the time of the collapse of the USSR, which claimed 30,000 lives, ended in an Armenian victory with Moscow’s support. But Azerbaijan retaliated in the fall of 2020 during a second war that left 6,500 dead and allowed it to retake many territories.