TBILISI (Portal) – Russia said on Friday that “public attacks” on its peacekeeping forces stationed in Azerbaijan’s breakaway Nagorno-Karabakh region were “unacceptable”, a day after Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan criticized the contingent.
Azerbaijani civilians posing as environmental activists have blocked the only road between Armenia and the predominantly ethnic Armenian enclave since December 12. Nagorno-Karabakh officials say food, medicine and fuel are running out.
On Thursday, Armenian news site quoted Hetq Pashinyan as accusing the Russian peacekeeping force of “becoming a silent witness to the depopulation of Nagorno-Karabakh” after it failed to reopen the road.
Pashinyan said that if Russian troops are unable to ensure stability and security in Nagorno-Karabakh, they should give way to a United Nations peacekeeping mission.
Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova said: “We consider all public attacks and provocations against our peacekeepers as unacceptable and premeditated acts that cause noticeable damage to the process of Armenian-Azerbaijani normalization.”
Nagorno-Karabakh is internationally recognized as part of Azerbaijan, but its residents are mostly ethnic Armenians and it broke away from Baku’s control in a war in the late 1980s and early 1990s when the Soviet Union dissolved.
In 2020, Azerbaijan reclaimed territory in and around the enclave after a second war that ended in a Russian-brokered ceasefire. Russian peacekeepers stationed along the Lachin corridor, the only road link between Armenia and Nagorno-Karabakh.
(Reporting by Felix Light; Editing by Andrew Heavens and Philippa Fletcher)