“Until the end of the week”
Armenia threatens next war with Azerbaijan
March 19, 2024, 12:21 p.m
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In September, Azerbaijan conquers the Nagorno-Karabakh region from Armenia. After that, the situation initially calms down. The two countries even begin peace talks. However, Yerevan now fears a new war over additional areas.
Six months after losing control of the Nagorno-Karabakh region to Azerbaijan, Armenia’s Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan speaks of the danger of a new war with his neighbor. Unless Armenia also agrees to return four Azerbaijani villages it has controlled since the early 1990s, war could break out “by the end of the week,” Russian state news agency TASS quoted Pashinyan as saying.
“I know how a war like that would end,” he added. According to the report, Pashinyan spoke to residents of the border region where the villages, which have been uninhabited for more than 30 years, are located. Armenia suffered a bitter defeat last September when Azerbaijani troops took control of Nagorno-Karabakh in a lightning offensive. The estimated 100,000 ethnic Armenians in the region then fled to Armenia. Both neighbors subsequently expressed their willingness to sign an official peace treaty to resolve the decades-long conflict.
However, the talks stalled over disagreements such as the demarcation of the 1,000-kilometer-long shared border. Azerbaijan also insists on the return of the four villages and several small enclaves. For Armenia, the villages are strategically relevant as they are located on an important connecting road between the capital Yerevan and the Georgian border. However, Pashinyan has in recent weeks signaled a willingness to return Armenian-controlled Azerbaijani land and suggested rerouting Armenia’s road network to bypass Azerbaijani territory.
Azerbaijan’s President Ilham Aliyev said on Sunday that a peace agreement with Armenia was “closer than ever before.” He made the comments after talks with NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg in Azerbaijan’s capital Baku. On Tuesday, Stoltenberg met Pashinyan in Armenia. The country is normally allied with Russia. But the relationship is strained. Yerevan has accused Moscow of failing to live up to its role as a protecting power and has subsequently shifted its foreign policy more towards the West.