Azerbaijan started military operations to take control of the Nagorno-Karabakh region in the most serious escalation since a war with neighboring Armenia killed thousands three years ago.
(Bloomberg) — Azerbaijan started military operations to take control of the Nagorno-Karabakh region in the most serious escalation since a war with neighboring Armenia killed thousands three years ago.
The Azerbaijani army on Tuesday began a “local anti-terrorist operation” aimed at destroying Armenian military positions in the disputed territory and “restoring the constitutional order,” the Defense Ministry in Baku said on its website. Russian peacekeeping troops who are in Nagorno-Karabakh following the 2020 war have been notified of the action, the ministry said.
Armenians in the Nagorno-Karabakh capital, Stepanakert, are under “mass artillery fire,” Ruben Vardanyan, the former Moscow investment banker who briefly headed the local administration, said from the city in a message on Telegram.
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Nagorno-Karabakh, which is internationally recognized as part of Azerbaijan but has a majority Armenian population, declared independence amid the collapse of the Soviet Union more than three decades ago. Azerbaijan took back part of the region and seven surrounding districts during six weeks of fighting in 2020 before Russian President Vladimir Putin brokered a truce deal and deployed almost 2,000 troops to maintain peace.
Russia is “deeply alarmed” by the outbreak of violence and urges an immediate halt to the bloodshed, Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova said at a televised briefing.
Azerbaijan said its forces were attacking military installations and weren’t targeting civilian areas. The Defense Ministry said “humanitarian corridors” were being opened on the Lachin road connecting Nagorno-Karabakh to Armenia and other routes from the region to allow “the evacuation of the population from the danger zone.”
Azerbaijan violated the cease-fire “along the entire length of the contact line” with missile and artillery strikes, Armenian officials in the unrecognized Nagorno-Karabakh Defense Ministry said.
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Armenia rejected Azerbaijan’s assertion that units of its military were in Nagorno-Karabakh, saying none were present there. The situation along Armenia’s border with Azerbaijan is also relatively calm, the Defense Ministry in Yerevan said in a statement.
While Armenia and Azerbaijan have been holding peace talks under US and European Union mediation since the conflict, no agreement has yet been reached.
There’s an “urgent need for immediate ceasefire to allow genuine dialogue between Baku and Karabakh Armenians as the only way to achieve peaceful coexistence,” Toivo Klaar, the EU Special Representative for the South Caucasus, said on X (formerly Twitter).
–With assistance from Sara Khojoyan.
(Updates with Russian comment in fifth paragraph, more detail throughout)
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