Azatutyun.am – De facto ethnic Armenian authorities in Nagorno-Karabakh have dismissed reports that appeared in Azerbaijan over the weekend about arms deliveries carried out to the region by Russian peacekeepers stationed there under the terms of a 2020 ceasefire deal between Moscow, Yerevan and Baku.
The Russian peacekeeping mission in Nagorno-Karabakh said through its telegram channel on Saturday that 12 tons of humanitarian cargo had been delivered from the Chkalovsky airport near Moscow to Yerevan’s Erebuni airport and then into Nagorno-Karabakh. The Russian side said the peacekeepers had already handed over basic necessities and food packages to 324 families in the Martuni area of Nagorno-Karabakh.
A video with several trucks with the inscription ‘Russian Army’ on them, with one of them driving out of a cargo plane presumably at a Yerevan airport and the column then traveling presumably to Nagorno-Karabakh, appeared on the internet the same day.
Telegram channels in Azerbaijan alleged that authorities in Baku prohibited an AN-148 plane of Russia’s Air Force from flying into Armenia through Azerbaijani airspace and that the aircraft allegedly carrying weapons had to make a detour to reach Armenia via Iran.
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Officials in Baku, Moscow or Yerevan have not commented on the matter.
Meanwhile, Davit Babayan, a de facto foreign minister of Nagorno-Karabakh, described as “information terrorism” reports made by Azerbaijani media about the transfer of military equipment to Nagorno-Karabakh through the Lachin corridor – a five-kilometer-wide strip of land that connects the region to Armenia and is controlled by Russian peacekeepers.
He claimed Azerbaijan may use it as a pretext for another provocation against the region’s ethnic Armenians in order “to undermine the agreement” regarding the Lachin corridor.
“First of all, [it is done] to intimidate people to show them that they [Azerbaijan] may block all flows along the corridor at any moment, including cargo and passenger traffic in order to paralyze Artsakh [Nagorno-Karabakh],” Babayan said.
“Naturally, no military equipment has been transported, because there are cameras, everything is under surveillance. This is not so, but they will periodically say such things, trying to resort to provocations. This is typical of Azerbaijan,” the Karabakh official added.
Official Baku has not commented on these accusations coming from Nagorno-Karabakh one week after a large rally in Stepanakert supporting the appeal of the region’s parliament to Russia for its continued military presence and “additional political and military mechanisms” to be put in place. The Karabakh lawmakers also demanded that Armenia’s government must be careful about recognizing Azerbaijan’s territorial integrity through a bilateral peace treaty that has been discussed by Yerevan and Baku in recent weeks.
Armenia and Azerbaijan have accused each other of ceasefire violations over the weekend along their tense border ahead of another round of talks between the two rivals.
The fresh tensions came as Armenian Foreign Minister Ararat Mirzoyan and his Azerbaijani counterpart, Jeyhun Bayramov, were set to meet in Washington on November 7 for peace talks hosted by U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken.
