Armenia accused Azerbaijan of sending troops into disputed villages in Nagorno-Karabakh
FILE PHOTO. A Russian peacekeeper holds a machine gun near the Dadivank Armenian monastery, in the self-proclaimed Nagorno-Karabakh Republic. © Sputnik/Maksim Blinov
Russian Defense Minister Sergey Shoigu talked to his Azerbaijani counterpart Zakir Hasanov on the phone on Friday to discuss a surge of tension in the disputed region of Nagorno-Karabakh, the Russian Defense Ministry reported on Friday. The call came after Armenia accused Azerbaijan of violating a ceasefire.
Shoigu had a similar phone call with Armenian Defense Minister Suren Papikyan on Thursday evening. Earlier in the day, Yerevan accused Baku of sending its troops to two villages in Nagorno-Karabakh.
One of them is called Parukh in Armenian and Farukh in Azerbaijani, while the other one is named Khramort. The settlements are located on the border between Azerbaijan and the territory administered by the Yerevan-backed self-proclaimed Republic of Artsakh, also known as Nagorno-Karabakh.
According to the Armenian side, the Azerbaijani troops tried to take over – or even succeeded with Parukh, according to some reports – the villages in violation of the November 2020 ceasefire agreement. Azerbaijan denied any violations and said the soldiers were simply clarifying their data on troops’ dispositions along the disengagement line.
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The ceasefire agreement in question was brokered by Russia after a bloody 44-day armed conflict between Yerevan and Baku that started in September 2020. The settlement deal relinquished swatches of territory to Azerbaijan, and Russian peacekeepers have been deployed along the contact line.
While internationally recognized as a de jure part of Azerbaijan, Artsakh is administered by a breakaway government that is loyal to Yerevan and includes many ethnic Armenians. The only overland link to Armenia, however, is the so-called Lachin corridor, now controlled by Russian peacekeepers under the terms of the ceasefire agreement.
