“We have not received such data from Azerbaijan’s open sources, therefore I cannot comment on that statement,” expert on Azerbaijan Taron Hovhannisyan told reporters regarding Republican Party candidate and former National Security Service head David Shahnazaryan’s statement that Azerbaijan built hills along the Artsakh-Azerbaijan Line of Contact and is preparing for an attack. According to Hovhannisyan, it is important to understand that Azerbaijan is always waiting for the opportunity for local and large-scale operations.
Commenting on another statement by David Shahnazaryan regarding how Armenia ‘lost territories’ in Nakhichevan, Hovhannisyan first presented what happened in that region. “Before April, Azerbaijan slowly started to come forward in mid-positions. As a result, the Azeri Armed Forces moved along the frontier, particularly in the former Hunot village. They came close, but the Armenian positions are higher. The other section is Areni where they took one hill that is higher in some places than the Armenian positions. But the Armenian positions are not organized poorly. The Armenian positions also moved forward. Moving their positions forward in Hunot did not give them any privileges, but the situation along the Areni positions is debatable.”
As Hovhannisyan mentioned, judging based off of satellite images, Azerbaijan does not have the opportunity to create tension in Areni, but in the past it was only 3-4 kilometers away. “Our main roads cannot be seen from their positions, nor can they see into villages. However, there is a way for Azerbaijan to create tension and psychological tension. The people need to be prepared for that.”
Luiza Sukiasyan
