It urged the international community to send a fact-finding mission to Karabakh and the Lachin corridor in order to prevent Baku from launching the “new aggression.”
Azerbaijan’s Defense Ministry threatened to take “resolute” actions on Tuesday two days after a shootout outside Stepanakert left three Karabakh Armenian police officers and two Azerbaijani soldiers dead. The ministry repeated its claims that its soldiers came under fire as they tried to check a Karabakh police vehicle allegedly smuggling weapons from Armenia.
The Karabakh police strongly denies that, saying that the vehicle transported only policemen and was ambushed by Azerbaijani special forces. The Russian peacekeepers have essentially confirmed that.
In another statement issued later on Tuesday, the Defense Ministry in Baku accused the peacekeepers of escorting a convoy of Armenian and Karabakh military trucks along a dirt road running parallel to a section of the Lachin corridor blocked by Azerbaijani protesters since December.
Armenia’s Defense Ministry swiftly denied the allegations. The Armenian Foreign Ministry likewise insisted the following morning that Yerevan did not use the corridor for any military supplies both before and during the three-month blockade.
No Armenian army units are stationed in Karabakh, read a ministry statement. It said Baku is “trying to create false information grounds for launching a new aggression not only against Nagorno-Karabakh but also the Republic of Armenia.”
The Azerbaijani government also renewed its demands for an Azerbaijani checkpoint on the sole road connecting Karabakh to Armenia. Yerevan rejected these demands earlier, saying that they run counter to the terms of the Russian-brokered ceasefire that stopped the 2020 Armenian-Azerbaijani war.
Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov also objected to the checkpoint when he visited Baku last week. He suggested that the Russian peacekeepers use “technical means” to dispel Azerbaijan’s “suspicions that the corridor is not functioning as intended.”