Azerbaijanis celebrate President Ilham Aliyev’s re-election on 7 February. Photo: AP / NTB
Azerbaijan is planning a full-scale war against Armenia, believes the latter’s Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan.
Thursday 15 February at 11:13
The claim comes two days after it was claimed that four Armenian soldiers were killed in a skirmish between the countries.
– Our analysis shows that Azerbaijan will start a military action against some parts of the border, with the possibility of turning such an escalation into a full-scale war against Armenia. This intention can be read in all of Azerbaijan’s statements and actions, Pashinyan said at a meeting on Thursday.
There has been an ice front between Armenia and Azerbaijan since the fall of the Soviet Union, partly because of the Armenian enclave of Nagorno-Karabakh, which seized large territories Azerbaijan considers its own. The latter captured the entire enclave in a few days last year, and almost the entire population of over 100,000 people fled to Armenia.
Now the Armenians fear that Azerbaijan wants to create a land bridge to its exclave in Nakhchivan. Azerbaijan itself rejects these claims, and President Ilham Aliyev believes that it is the Armenians who are aggressive.