Julien Holtzer with AFP
Despite a ceasefire signed last year between Armenia and Azerbaijan, concerning control of the Nagorno-Karabakh region, tensions have continued to grow in recent months between the two Caucasian countries. A situation that led to shooting on Tuesday near Navorny Karabakh, a hotly contested region.
Officially, a ceasefire exists between Armenia and Azerbaijan and the deployment of Russian peacekeepers after the 2020 clashes. But for months, tensions have steadily escalated between these two Caucasus countries. The reason: the two countries vehemently claim control of the Nagorno-Karabakh region, an enclave located in the southern Caucasus that Armenians consider independent. This weekend, the two countries accused each other of border shootings. And the violence started again on Tuesday. Fighting opposed the two camps near the disputed region of Nagorny-Karabakh.
“An attack by Azerbaijani forces on the positions of the Armenian forces caused deaths and injuries on the Armenian side,” the Armenian Defense Ministry said in a statement, adding that Yerevan had also lost control of “two military positions”. . A situation which raises fears of a resumption of the war which opposed these two rival countries of the Caucasus last year. Armenia also claimed to have inflicted “significant human casualties on Azerbaijani forces”. “The fighting continues, its intensity has not diminished,” the statement added.
A short war that left 6,500 dead last year
On the Azerbaijani side, the state wants to be reassuring about the alleged violence of the clashes. “Azerbaijani soldiers repelled a counterattack by Armenian forces (…) Armenian soldiers, frightened and confused, left their positions,” the Azerbaijani Defense Ministry said in a statement.
In the fall of last year, Armenia and Azerbaijan had fought a short war, which had left more than 6,500 dead, for the enclave of Nagorny-Karabakh already the subject of a first bloody conflict in the 1990s. These battles ended in a heavy defeat for Armenia, forced to cede several regions forming a glacis around the separatist enclave.