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Month: September 2023
With a population that is primarily of Armenian descent and accepted internationally as being a part of Azerbaijan, Karabakh broke away from Baku’s rule in the early 1990s following a war. In a conflict in 2020, Azerbaijan reclaimed large areas of surrounding territory Image Courtesy AFP
In two separate events in the Nagorno-Karabakh region, Azerbaijan reported on Tuesday that six of its nationals had been killed by land mines. “Illegal Armenian armed groups” were to blame for the lethal devices’ placement.
With a population that is primarily of Armenian descent and accepted internationally as being a part of Azerbaijan, Karabakh broke away from Baku’s rule in the early 1990s following a war. In a conflict in 2020, Azerbaijan reclaimed large areas of surrounding territory.
Four personnel of the interior ministry were killed, according to reports from Baku, when a mine blew up their truck close to where a tunnel was being built. It said that another mine had killed two civilians who were also riding in a truck.
The ethnic Armenian administration in Karabakh, which Azerbaijan wants to dismantle in order to reintegrate the region, did not respond right away. On Monday, Armenia denied claims that its own armed personnel had planted mines on Azerbaijani soil.
A day after desperately needed supplies of food and medication were simultaneously transported to Karabakh along two highways, a move that appeared to have the potential to reduce rising tension between Azerbaijan and Armenia, the landmine incidents took place.
But bilateral relations are still quite strained.
On Tuesday, the defence ministry of Azerbaijan accused “illegal Armenian armed groups” of interfering with a passenger plane’s GPS navigation as it was travelling from Tbilisi, Georgia, to Baku.
The charge, according to ethnic Armenians in Karabakh, is “an absolute lie” that is intended to draw attention away from “the humanitarian catastrophe caused by the illegal blockade” of Karabakh by Baku.
That was in reference to Azerbaijani restrictions that had been in place for months on the Lachin corridor, the only route between Armenia and Karabakh, and which, until recently, had prevented aid from entering on the pretext that it was allegedly being used for arms smuggling.
The foreign ministry of Armenia stated on Monday that it appeared as though Azerbaijan was setting the stage for a military escalation with its diplomatic attitude.
Both parties claim that they remain committed to settling their differences via a peace deal.
(With agency inputs)
Published on: September 19, 2023 15:39:00 IST
This handout photograph released by the Uzbek Presidential press service on September 14, 2023, shows the heads of states of participating countries if the Fifth Consultative Meeting of Central Asian Heads of State in Dushanbe. (From L): Azerbaijan’s President Ilham Aliyev, President Kassym-Jomart Tokayev of the Republic of Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan’s President Sadyr Japarov, Tajikistan’s President Emomali Rakhmon, Turkmenistan’s President Serdar Berdimuhamedov and President of the Republic of Uzbekistan Shavkat Mirziyoyev. (Photo by Handout / Uzbek Presidential Press Service / AFP) / RESTRICTED TO EDITORIAL USE – MANDATORY CREDIT “AFP PHOTO / UZBEK PRESIDENTIAL PRESS SERVICE ” – NO MARKETING NO ADVERTISING CAMPAIGNS – DISTRIBUTED AS A SERVICE TO CLIENTS – RESTRICTED TO EDITORIAL USE – MANDATORY CREDIT “AFP PHOTO / UZBEK PRESIDENTIAL PRESS SERVICE ” – NO MARKETING NO ADVERTISING CAMPAIGNS – DISTRIBUTED AS A SERVICE TO CLIENTS /
Four policemen and two civilians were killed in separate mine blasts Tuesday in the breakaway region of Nagorno-Karabakh, Azerbaijan said, blaming “sabotage groups” amid spiraling tensions with neighbouring Armenia.
Fears of a fresh war between the Caucasus arch-foes — locked in a decades-long dispute over the breakaway mountainous region — have grown in recent months.
Azerbaijan’s security services said two men died in the Khodzhavenskiy district and four police officers were later killed en route to the blast site.
The two civilians — born in 1970 and 1965 — were killed around 4:00 am by a mine placed by Armenian separatist “sabotage groups,” it said.
The blast happened “in the zone of temporary deployment of the Russian peacekeeping contingent,” deployed by Moscow in 2020 as part of a ceasefire deal between Armenia and Azerbaijan.
The police officers who subsequently died were on the road to Azerbaijani-controlled Shusha, a settlement captured from separatists during the 2020 war.
The policemen, travelling on a Kamaz truck, were born between 1987 and 1998.
Azerbaijan opened a terrorism probe into the incident.
The deaths came a day after aid deliveries resumed to breakaway Karabakh territories, raising hopes for tensions between Armenia and Azerbaijan to ease.
Karabakh, over which Baku and Yerevan fought two wars, is heavily mined.
Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev has said that landmines were the main obstacle for the return of displaced people to territories retaken from Armenian separatists in 2020.
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Azerbaijan has announced a major new military offensive in the breakaway region of Nagorno-Karabakh, declaring an “evacuation” of ethnic Armenians in “the dangerous area” and opening up a crisis that risks spiralling into all-out war.
The escalation comes after months of fruitless negotiations and amid growing speculation that Turkey-backed Azerbaijan has been gearing up to use force to bring a decades-long frozen conflict to an end. A war between Armenia and Azerbaijan in 2020 killed thousands on each side. Over the past months, Azerbaijan has been tightening a supply blockade of food and medicines into the ethnic Armenian enclave that lies entirely within its territory.
Baku’s defense ministry said on Tuesday it was launching “local anti-terrorist activities” to “suppress large-scale provocations” in the territory. Reports and film footage from Nagorno-Karabakh showed heavy shelling and gunfire in the enclave. Air raid sirens wailed in Stepanakert, the de facto capital of the unrecognized state.
Azerbaijan’s claim that it would also evacuate the Armenian population from “dangerous areas” triggered instant fears of ethnic cleansing.
The prospect of renewed war in the Caucasus is a major strategic and diplomatic set-back for the EU, which has been courting Azerbaijan as an ally and alternative gas supplier to Russia.
European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen made an official visit to Azerbaijan last July in an effort to secure increased exports of natural gas. Describing the country as a “reliable, trustworthy partner,” she and President Ilham Aliyev signed a memorandum of understanding on increased economic cooperation, despite warnings from experts that Brussels was simply seeking to replace one autocracy with another.
Azerbaijan’s government said it launched Tuesday’s assault in response to the destruction of vehicles by landmines, which killed four of its soldiers and two civilians, but it gave no indication of how besieged Karabakh Armenians laid such weapons.
“As part of the [“anti-terrorist”] measures, positions on the front line and in-depth, long-term firing points of the formations of Armenia’s armed forces, as well as combat assets and military facilities are incapacitated using high-precision weapons,” the Azerbaijani government said in a statement.
Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan convened the country’s security council and has called for the U.N. Security Council and Russia to take “clear and unambiguous steps to end Azerbaijani aggression.”
Speaking to POLITICO, Hikmet Hajiyev, foreign policy adviser to Azerbaijani President Aliyev, said that the “goal is to neutralize military infrastructure” and added that the local Armenian population had been sent SMS messages warning them of the “counter-terrorism actions.”
“They have been asked to stay apart from legitimate military targets,” Hajiyev said.
In a subsequent statement, the Azerbaijani defense ministry said it had established “humanitarian corridors and reception points” in order to “ensure the evacuation of the population from the dangerous area.”
However, in a voice message from Stepanakert, Siranush Sargsyan, a local Karabakh Armenian journalist, told POLITICO that neither she nor any of her family had received SMS messages warning of the attack and said it was impossible to trust Azerbaijan’s “humanitarian corridor” offer to leave. “How can I trust them? They will kill me, definitely,” she added.
After Armenia and Azerbaijan fought a war over Nagorno-Karabakh in 2020, a Russia-brokered cease-fire agreement has since collapsed, with Azerbaijani forces taking control of the Lachin Corridor, the road connecting the territory to Armenia. Since then, aid organizations say they have been unable to deliver supplies of food and fuel, amid growing fears of “ethnic cleansing.”
In a message shared through intermediaries outside the region due to intermittent internet connection, Sergey Ghazaryan, the unrecognized government’s foreign minister, said Azerbaijan had sent in troops “in order to implement its policy of genocide, is moving towards the physical destruction of the civilian population and the destruction of civilian objects.”
In an interview with POLITICO last week, Armenian Prime Minister Pashinyan said Azerbaijan had built up large numbers of troops on both the countries’ shared border, and along the contact line in Nagorno-Karabakh. “It is not possible to exclude the scenario of escalation,” he said. While Azerbaijan is increasingly able to depend on Turkey for strategic support, Pashinyan complained that Russia was no longer well-placed to act as a guarantor of Armenia’s security after the invasion of Ukraine.
Photos and videos purportedly posted by mobilized Azerbaijani soldiers showed large convoys heading towards the region, many marked with an inverted A-symbol — similar to the Z sign Russian forces painted on their vehicles during the invasion of Ukraine last year.
The offensive comes after months of high-stakes negotiations brokered by the EU, U.S. and Russia in an effort to avoid a repeat of the 2020 war and end the worsening famine.
In July, the EU’s top diplomat, Josep Borrell, said that Brussels was “deeply concerned about the serious humanitarian situation” and called on all sides to commit to “ negotiated outcomes and a future built on common interests and mutual trust.”
In a call with Aliyev earlier this month, U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken urged Azerbaijan to refrain from military escalations and emphasized the “need for a dialogue,” while also pressing the country to reopen the Lachin Corridor.
European Council President Charles Michel, who has led talks with Armenia and Azerbaijan in recent months, said the news was “devastating” and insisted the “military actions of Azerbaijan must be immediately halted to allow for a genuine dialogue between Baku and Karabakh Armenians.”
This story is being updated.
Azerbaijan on Tuesday launched a military operation in the breakaway Nagorno-Karabakh region and demanded the total withdrawal of Armenian forces from the disputed mountainous territory as a precondition for peace.
Fears of a fresh war have been building in recent months, with Armenia accusing Azerbaijan of a troop build-up and decrying a blockade of its only land link to Nagorno-Karabakh.
An AFP journalist in the separatist stronghold of Stepanakert said blasts could be heard in the town as Azerbaijan said it was using “high precision weapons on the front line and in depth”.
“Localised anti-terrorist measures have been launched in the region,” Baku’s defence ministry said in a statement.
The ministry said it had opened “humanitarian corridors and reception points” to allow civilians to leave.
“We reiterate that the civilian population and civilian infrastructure are not targets,” the statement said.
Ethnic Armenian forces in Karabakh said Azerbaijani troops were trying to break through their defences after heavy shelling, but that they were holding the line for now.
Armenia, which had been holding peace talks with Azerbaijan, condemned what it called Baku’s “full-scale aggression” against the people of Nagorno-Karabakh and accused Azerbaijan of shelling towns and villages.
“Driven by a sense of impunity, Azerbaijan has openly claimed responsibility for the aggression,” Armenia’s foreign ministry said in a statement.
‘Intensive fire’
The latest escalation comes nearly three years after a brief but brutal war between Armenia and Azerbaijan over the mountainous region.
The ex-Soviet Caucasus rivals have been locked in a decades-long dispute over Karabakh with large-scale hostilities breaking out in the 1990s and in 2020.
A separatist organisation based in Armenia said on social media that “Stepanakert and other cities and villages are under intensive fire,” accusing Azerbaijan of launching a “large-scale military offensive.”
Azerbaijan justified the mission, citing “systematic” shelling by Armenian-backed forces and accusing them of carrying out “reconnaissance activities” and fortifying defensive positions.
“There is also the strengthening of combat positions with personnel, armoured vehicles, artillery and other weapons,” Azerbaijan said, accusing separatists of “a high level of combat readiness”.
Regional power brokers Russia and Turkey, which oversee a fragile peacekeeping mission in Nagorno-Karabakh, had been informed about Azerbaijan’s military activities in Karabakh, Baku said.
Moscow urged the parties to the conflict to respect a peace accord and end the “bloodshed”.
Russian foreign ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova said it was given “minutes” notice of the start of Azerbaijan’s operation.
The European Union called on Azerbaijan to stop its military operation in the disputed region and warned against displacing civilians.
“Military actions of Azerbaijan must be immediately halted to allow for a genuine dialogue between Baku and Karabakh Armenians,” EU Council president Charles Michel wrote in a social media post.
“This military escalation should not be used as a pretext to force the exodus of the local population,” added the EU foreign policy chief, Josep Borrell.
Mine blasts
The fighting came just hours after Azerbaijan said four police officers and two civilians were killed in mine blasts in Nagorno-Karabakh, with authorities blaming separatists.
The deaths at dawn came after Armenian separatists said they had reached an agreement with Azerbaijani authorities to resume aid deliveries to Karabakh.
Baku’s security services said two civilians had died in the district of Khojavend and four police officers were killed in another mine explosion en route to the site.
Their vehicle hit “a mine laid on a tunnel road under construction by illegal Armenian armed groups,” a statement said.
Azerbaijan said the incident took place “in the zone of temporary deployment of the Russian peacekeeping contingent,” despatched by Moscow in 2020 as part of a ceasefire deal between Armenia and Azerbaijan.
Azerbaijan said the police officers were killed on the road to Azerbaijani-controlled Shusha, recaptured from separatists in 2020.
In the six-week 2020 war, Azerbaijan regained control of key areas of Karabakh, including the culturally revered town of Shusha.
But other parts of the region, including the main city of Stepanakert, remain under the control of Armenian separatists.
Azerbaijan said the road to Shusha was built after it captured pockets of land from Armenia in 2020.
“During the construction of the road, the area along the route was cleared of mines,” Baku said.
Nagorno-Karabakh is heavily mined. Azerbaijan said Tuesday more than 300 of its nationals have been wounded or killed by mines since 2020.
(FRANCE 24 with AFP)
YEREVAN, Armenia (AP) — Azerbaijan on Tuesday began what it called an “anti-terrorist operation” targeting Armenian military positions in the Nagorno-Karabakh region and officials in that region said there was heavy artillery firing around its capital.
The Azerbaijani defense ministry announced the start of the operation hours after four soldiers and two civilians died in landmine explosions in the Nagorno-Karabakh region.
The ministry did not immediately give details, but said “positions on the front line and in-depth, long-term firing points of the formations of Armenia’s armed forces, as well as combat assets and military facilities are incapacitated using high-precision weapons.”
The Azerbaijani statement said, “Only legitimate military targets are being incapacitated.”
But ethnic Armenian officials in Nagorno-Karabakh said in a statement that the region’s capital Stepanakert and other villages were “under intense shelling.”
The reports raised concerns that a full-scale war over the region could resume between Azerbaijan and Armenia, which fought heavily for six weeks in 2020.
Earlier Tuesday, Azerbaijan said six people were killed in two separate explosions in the region that is partly under the control of ethnic Armenian forces.
A statement from Azerbaijan’s interior ministry, state security service and prosecutor-general said two employees of the highway department died before dawn when their vehicle was blown up by a mine and that a truckload of soldiers responding to the incident hit another mine, killing four.
Nagorno-Karabakh and sizable surrounding territories were under ethnic Armenian control since the 1994 end of a separatist war, but Azerbaijan regained the territories and parts of Nagorno-Karabakh itself in a six-week war in 2020. That war ended with an armistice that placed a Russian peacekeeper contingent in Nagorno-Karabakh.
However, Azerbaijan alleges that Armenia has smuggled in weapons since then. The claims led to a blockade of the road connecting Nagorno-Karabakh to Armenia, causing severe food and medicine shortages in the region.
Red Cross shipments of flour and medical supplies reached Nagorno-Karabakh on Monday, but local officials said road connections to the region were not fully open.
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Jim Heintz in Tallinn, Estonia, and Aida Sultanova in London contributed to this story.
Department of State includes Otar Partskhaladze in sanctions list
The Department of State on Thursday said it was designating individuals and entities to impose further costs in response to Russia’s unprovoked war against Ukraine. The Department has designated a Georgian-Russian oligarch and a Russian Intelligence Services officer to further address the Russian Federation’s malign influence abroad.
According to the Department’s statement, Otar Partskhaladze, a Georgian-Russian oligarch, is being designated pursuant to section 1(a)(i) for operating or having operated in the management consulting sector of the Russian Federation economy.
“The Department of State is designating 37 entities involved in expanding Russia’s energy production and future export capacity and identifying two related vessels as blocked property. These designations include entities and individuals involved in the development of key energy projects and associated infrastructure, including Russia’s Arctic LNG 2 liquified natural gas project, as well as entities involved in the procurement of materials and advanced technology for future energy projects for which Russia has historically relied on foreign service companies’ expertise and technology,” reads the statement.
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