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A Russian military helicopter was shot down over Armenia, threatening to lead Moscow into a growing conflict between Armenia and Azerbaijan that has left thousands of people dead.
The Russian military Mi-24 helicopter was shot down Monday by a surface-to-air missile while escorting a convoy from a Russian military base in the country. Two Russian servicemen were killed in the attack, Moscow said, and another was wounded. The Russian defense ministry said it was investigating who was behind the attack.
Later on Monday night, the Azerbaijani Foreign Ministry took responsibility for the attack on the Russian helicopter and apologized, saying that Baku was willing to pay compensation.
Armenia’s emergency ministry reported that the accident took place near the village of Yeraskh, which is located in southern Armenia, close to the border with Azerbaijan.
That is far from the fighting in the controversial Nagorno-Karabakh region, where Azerbaijan has launched a bloody offensive to regain the mountainous enclave from de facto Armenian control. The attack appeared to come from across the border in the Azerbaijan-controlled Nakhchivan region.
The attack will test Russia’s willingness to stay out of the conflict between Armenia and Azerbaijan, both former Soviet nations with which Russia maintains good relations and arms contracts. Azerbaijan is backed by Turkey, a regional rival that Moscow has courted and countered by backing rival sides in Syria.
Moscow has said it will honor a commitment to defend Armenia under a military treaty if fighting spreads beyond Nagorno-Karabakh, which is internationally recognized as Azerbaijani territory but has been controlled by an Armenian-backed administration since 1994. .
But Moscow has largely stayed on the sidelines as Azerbaijani forces moved through the mountainous enclave, claiming to capture the mountaintop city of Shusha and closing in on the region’s largest city, Stepanakert.
A spokeswoman for the Russian Foreign Ministry played down the possibility of military intervention and urged both sides to end hostilities, but said Moscow “does not support a forced solution to this crisis.”
Azerbaijan released its first evidence Monday that it had taken over the city of Shusha (called Shushi in Armenian), including a short video showing Azerbaijani troops raising a flag over the city administration.
An official from the Nagorno-Karabakh administration confirmed that he had lost control over Shusha on Monday and warned that an Azerbaijani offensive was near Stepanakert.
“Shushi is completely out of our control,” Vahram Poghosyan, a spokesman for the Nagorno-Karabakh administration, wrote on Facebook on Monday. Poghosyan did not immediately respond to a request for comment, but confirmed his comments to Reuters and local Armenian media.
However, other local and Armenian officials denied that Shusha had been taken. In a statement late Monday, Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan said that “the battle for the city of Shushi continues.”
“The [Nagorno Karabakh] the defense army and the militia stand firm in their native soil and we will continue to fight the enemy until the end, ”he said.
