2023-09-19 17:53:13
Azerbaijan launched a military operation in Nagorno Karabakh on Tuesday, September 19, three years after the previous war, demanding the “total and unconditional” withdrawal of its Armenian adversary from this region disputed for decades with Armenia.
The fighting left at least 5 dead and 80 injured, Armenian separatist authorities said, while Baku assured that it was only targeting military targets.
Armenian diplomacy denounced a “large-scale aggression” for the purposes of “ethnic cleansing”. She also judged that Russia, guarantor of a ceasefire dating from 2020 with peace forces on the ground, must “stop Azerbaijani aggression”. Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinian also called on Moscow, its traditional ally, and the UN to act. Yerevan said it had no troops in Karabakh, suggesting that separatist forces were alone against the Azerbaijani army.
The Azerbaijani Defense Ministry announced Tuesday morning the launch of “anti-terrorist operations” to put “the positions of the Armenian armed forces” out of harm’s way, after the death of six Azerbaijanis in the explosion of mines on a construction site. road.
Tensions have been increasing for months around Nagorno Karabakh, a secessionist territory of Azerbaijan with an Armenian majority, which has already been at the heart of two wars between Yerevan and Baku, the last of which lasted six weeks.
Calls for a “coup d’état” in Armenia
Azerbaijani diplomacy warned that “the only way to achieve peace and stability” was “the unconditional and total withdrawal of the Armenian armed forces” from the territory and “the dissolution of the so-called separatist regime”.
Nagorno Karabakh, a disputed region for three decades
© / afp.com/Valentin RAKOVSKY, Sophie RAMIS
The Armenian Defense Ministry assured him “that Armenia did not (have) an army in Nagorno Karabakh”, therefore implying that its separatist allies were facing the opposing army. Comments which Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinian echoed a little later, accusing Baku of wanting to “drag Armenia into hostilities”.
The separatists claim that several towns in Nagorno Karabakh, including the capital Stepanakert, are targeted by “intensive shooting”, which also targets civilian infrastructure. The Azerbaijani army is trying to advance “deep” into Karabakh, they said.
The situation on the Armenian-Azerbaijani border is currently “stable”, however, Nikol Pashinian clarified. The Prime Minister, who convened his Security Council, also denounced calls for a “coup d’état” in Armenia, while television reported hundreds of demonstrators massed in front of the government headquarters in Yerevan.
A humanitarian crisis
Nagorno Karabakh, scene of two wars between Armenia and Azerbaijan, in the early 1990s and then in the fall of 2020, is one of the most mined regions in the former USSR. Explosions regularly cause casualties there. This Armenian-majority mountainous region located in Azerbaijan proclaimed its independence from Baku upon the disintegration of the USSR, with the support of Yerevan, leading to an armed conflict won by the separatists.
But 30 years later, in the fall of 2020, the Azerbaijani armed forces took their revenge and reconquered significant territories in and around the region. This war ended after mediation by Vladimir Putin and the deployment of a Russian peacekeeping mission. But the truce has always been fragile and punctuated by armed incidents.
These new incidents come as Yerevan accuses Baku, which denies, of causing a humanitarian crisis in Nagorno Karabakh by blocking the Lachin corridor since the end of 2022, the only road between Armenia and the mountainous enclave. Armenia also criticizes Russia for its inaction. Baku, with the support of Turkey and its oil windfall, has built an army much more powerful than that of its Armenian neighbor.
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