Azerbaijan claimed to have taken control, Wednesday August 3, of several positions and destroyed Armenian targets in Nagorno-Karabakh, during an escalation which left three dead and revived the risk of war in this mountainous enclave. “Control has been established on several important heights”including hills, the Azerbaijani Defense Ministry said in a statement, adding that its forces were fortifying those positions.
Earlier in the day, both sides reported the deaths of at least two Armenian fighters and one Azerbaijani soldier in clashes around Karabakh. Azerbaijan justified the organization of an operation « Vengeance » after the death of one of his conscripts in the Lachin district, a buffer zone between the Armenian border and Nagorno-Karabakh. Opposite, two members of the Armenian separatist forces were killed and 14 injured in an Azerbaijani drone strike, authorities in the enclave said, denouncing a “flagrant violation of the ceasefire”.
6,500 dead in the last war
These incidents are likely to weigh on the peace talks which have been taking place for several months between Azerbaijan and Armenia, two rival ex-Soviet republics in the Caucasus, with the mediation of the European Union. Sign of the escalation of tensions, the leader of the separatists of Nagorno-Karabakh, Arayik Haroutiounian, signed a decree on Wednesday proclaiming a partial military mobilization in this territory, according to the site of the presidency.
After a first war that killed more than 30,000 people in the early 1990s, Armenia and Azerbaijan clashed again in the fall of 2020 for control of Nagorno-Karabakh, a mountainous region which, supported by Yerevan had seceded from Azerbaijan. More than 6,500 people were killed in this new war lost by Armenia. As part of a ceasefire agreement brokered by Moscow, which has deployed peacekeepers in Nagorno-Karabakh, Yerevan ceded significant territory to Azerbaijan.
This ceasefire agreement was experienced as a humiliation in Armenia, where several opposition parties have been demanding since the resignation of Prime Minister Nikol Pashinian, whom they accuse of having made too many concessions to Baku. Despite a timid diplomatic relaxation between Armenia and Azerbaijan, tensions remain strong between the two former Soviet republics. Both countries regularly report outbreaks of violence and casualties among soldiers.
The European Union calls for “negotiated solutions”
Armenia on Wednesday urged the international community to halt the “aggressive actions” of Azerbaijan and “activate the necessary mechanisms to do so”. The European Union called on Wednesday for the “immediate cessation of hostilities”. « It is essential to de-escalate, to fully respect the ceasefire and to return to the negotiating table to seek negotiated solutions”said Peter Stano, the spokesman for the head of European diplomacy Josep Borrell, in a press release.
Russia for its part accused Azerbaijan of violating the ceasefire on Wednesday, adding that its peacekeepers deployed in the region were seeking to « stabiliser » the situation.