At the same time, the European Union (EU) called for an “immediate end” to hostilities, calling on both sides to return to the “negotiating table” to find mutually agreed solutions.
“In the Zaribaba region, the ceasefire was violated by the Azerbaijani armed forces,” the Russian Defense Ministry said in a statement, adding that “the Russian command of the peacekeeping forces, together with the representatives of Azerbaijan and Armenia, is taking action. Regulate the situation.”
In Brussels, Peter Stano, a spokesman for European diplomatic chief Josef Borrell, said it was necessary to “restore and fully respect the ceasefire and return to the negotiating table and find negotiated solutions”.
The text added that the EU remains “committed to overcoming tensions and continuing its commitment to lasting peace and stability in the South Caucasus”.
Azerbaijan said today it had taken control of several levels of Armenian targets in the Nagorno-Karabakh region, a fresh escalation that left three dead in this mountainous region of the South Caucasus and rekindled the risk of war.
“Control has been secured in several key areas,” including the mountains, the Azeri defense ministry said in a statement, adding that its forces were working to reinforce those positions.
Earlier, two opposing camps noted the deaths of at least two Armenian fighters and an Azerbaijani soldier in clashes on the outskirts of Nagorno-Karabakh, an Armenian-majority separatist region located in Azerbaijan, rekindling fresh fears. War after 2020 Bloody Conflict.
The incidents jeopardize months of European Union (EU)-brokered peace talks between Azerbaijan and Armenia, two former rival Soviet republics in the Caucasus.
Azerbaijan’s Defense Ministry announced this morning that a soldier was killed in firing on an Azeri military position in the Laxin district, a buffer zone between the Armenian border and Nagorno-Karabakh.
Azerbaijan said it carried out a retaliatory operation of “retaliation” in which “several combat positions of illegal Armenian armed elements were destroyed”.
An Azeri ‘drone’ (unmanned aerial vehicle) attack killed two members of Armenian separatist forces and wounded 14 others, denouncing a “flagrant violation of the ceasefire”, enclave officials announced.
In a signal of rising tensions, Nagorno-Karabakh separatist leader Arayk Harutyunyan signed a decree announcing a partial military mobilization in the territory today, the president’s website said.
The former Soviet republics of the South Caucasus, Armenia and Azerbaijan, declared independence in 1991.
Nagorno-Karabakh, an area on Azerbaijani territory now inhabited almost exclusively by Armenians (Orthodox Christians), declared independence from Muslim Azerbaijan in the early 1990s after a war that left some 30,000 dead and hundreds of thousands of refugees.
Following that war, a ceasefire was signed in 1994 and mediation by the Minsk Group (Russia, France and the US) set up by the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE) was accepted, but armed conflicts continued. Often and will be involved in major conflicts in 2018.
Nearly two years later, in the fall of 2020, Armenia and Azerbaijan fought a six-week battle for control of Nagorno-Karabakh, a new war that left 6,500 dead and a heavy Armenian defeat that saw it lose a significant portion of the territories it controlled. For three decades.
After signing an agreement under Russian mediation, Azerbaijan, with military support from Turkey, recorded important territorial gains and Moscow sent a 2,000-strong peacekeeping force to the Nagorno-Karabakh region.
Despite the appalling diplomatic betrayal, armed incidents often continue in the region or along the official border between the two countries.
