[ad_1]
Armenia and Azerbaijan are on the brink of war, after new clashes on Sunday (09/27) that left at least 23 dead and another 100 wounded, between the Azeri forces and those of the separatist region. Nagorno-Karabakh, with the support of Yerevan.
With Moscow playing the role of arbiter in the region, Russian President Vladimir Putin has called for an end to the conflict, the worst since 2016 in the disputed region.
At least 16 separatist soldiers were killed and more than 100 wounded in the fighting, according to Nagorno-Karabakh authorities. Armenia and Azerbaijan, which have blamed each other for the escalation, have also reported civilian casualties: Yerevan speaks of a dead woman and child, while Baku says an Azeri family of five has died.
A large-scale armed conflict involving Azerbaijan and Armenia could provoke the intervention of rival forces in the Caucasus region, Russia and Turkey. The Nagorno-Karabakh conflict, which was separated from Azerbaijan with the support of Armenia, has been fueling regional tensions for 30 years.
Azerbaijan’s Defense Ministry says six Armenian-controlled villages have been captured in the fighting, a claim denied by Yerevan.
Baku also claims to have occupied a strategically important hill in Karabakh. Martial law has been imposed in Azerbaijan, as well as a curfew in the capital, Baku, in several major cities and in the area near the front line, at night.
Nagorno-Karabakh leader Aragik Haroutiunian confirmed late Sunday (09/27) that the separatist pocket had lost some ground in clashes with the Azerbaijani army.
The Nagorno-Karabakh president added that there were deaths and injuries, both among civilians and among the military.
Earlier, Armenian Prime Minister Nicole Pasinian also declared a “general mobilization” and “martial law” in the country. The Nagorno-Karabakh authorities did the same. “The authoritarian regime (of Azerbaijan) has again declared war on the people of Armenia,” Pasinyan said, adding that the two countries were on the brink of a “full-scale war” with “unpredictable consequences. She also called on the international community to avoid any “Turkish intervention” in the conflict.
Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev has denounced Armenia’s “attack” and promised that his country will “defeat” Yerevan.
Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan promised to help “by all means” in Baku, following a telephone conversation with his Azeri counterpart. Ankara has traditionally maintained close and friendly relations with Azerbaijan.
Neighboring Iran, for its part, said it was ready to mediate talks between the two countries.
Information on Syrian fighters
The Armenian Defense Ministry announced late Sunday (09/27) that it is examining information according to which Syrian fighters are fighting on the side of the Azeris, in the clashes that broke out in the Nagorno-Karabakh enclave.
Hikmet Hajiyev, the Azeri president’s foreign policy adviser, dismissed the information as “nonsense.”
This information comes from the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, which is based in Britain and has been monitoring developments on the Syrian front since the start of the war in 2011.
NATO calls for an “immediate cessation of hostilities”
The EU, Germany, NATO and France have also called for an end to hostilities.
A senior NATO official has called on Azerbaijan and Armenia to immediately end hostilities in the Nagorno-Karabakh region.
The two sides “must immediately end the conflict,” said James Appathurai, Special Representative of the NATO Secretary General for the Caucasus and Central Asia. He also called for the resumption of talks on a peaceful settlement. “NATO supports the efforts of the Minsk Group of the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe,” he added.
The Minsk Group, co-chaired by France, Russia and the United States, was created in 1992 to find a peaceful solution to the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict.
A forgotten conflict
The Azerbaijani Defense Ministry says it has launched a “complete counterattack at the front” in Karabakh aimed at “ending the military activities of the Armenian Armed Forces”.
The Karabakh Defense Ministry, on the other hand, says it has destroyed four helicopters, 15 drones and 10 Azeri tanks.
A video posted by Yerevan shows two Azeri tanks firing and thick smoke rising alongside three other tanks.
Baku admitted that one of its helicopters was shot down, adding that the crew was rescued. It also says it destroyed 12 anti-aircraft batteries. And the Azerbaijani army has released a video showing the destruction of three enemy military vehicles from above.
Nagorno-Karabakh is the scene of a war that started in the early 1990s and claimed the lives of 30,000 people. Baku wants to regain control of the region, which no country has recognized as an independent democracy. The peace talks have been stalled for years. There are frequent clashes between separatists and Azeris, but also between Armenians and Azeris, the most recent last July.
Alessia Vartanian, an expert at the International Crisis Group, said the new escalation was mainly due to the lack of an active international mediation effort to end the conflict. “After the pandemic broke out, ‘the conflict was forgotten and diplomats (mediators) did not go to Baku and Yerevan even after the July clashes,” he explained.
In recent years, Azerbaijan has used its oil revenues to buy weapons. Armenia, a much poorer country, is nevertheless closer to Russia, which has a military base on its territory. Yerevan also belongs to a Russian-led civil-military union, the Collective Security Treaty Organization.
Russia, which rivals Turkey in the region, sells arms to both countries.
Read the news from Greece and the world, with the reliability and validity of News247.gr
[ad_2]
