The EUMA emphasized on Twitter that it daily monitors the military and security situation from four operating bases, patrolling alongside the Armenian-Azerbaijani border area.
“Based on the information on the ground, we see no unusual military movement or buildup, especially at the entrance to the Lachin corridor. We keep patrolling the areas,” the EUMA said.
Armenia’s Foreign Ministry on Monday also issued a statement calling accusations from Baku false. “The spreading of this false information indicates Azerbaijan’s intention to aggravate the situation in the region,” it charged, again rejecting Azerbaijan’s statements about the presence of Armenia’s troops in Nagorno-Karabakh.
“It is also evident that one of the objectives of Azerbaijan’s disinformation campaign is to divert the international community’s attention from the escalating humanitarian crisis in Nagorno-Karabakh, which is intensifying day by day, and from its steps to implement ethnic cleansing in Nagorno-Karabakh through provoking a humanitarian catastrophe,” the ministry said, referring to what Yerevan views as Azerbaijan’s illegal blockade of the Lachin corridor, the only road connecting Armenia with Nagorno-Karabakh.
Mutual accusations by Armenians and Azerbaijanis come amid reports of intensifying cross-border shootings that both sides blame on each other. Armenia said one of its soldiers was seriously wounded when Azerbaijan opened fire along the eastern border on Monday.
Armenia and Azerbaijan have been locked in a conflict over Nagorno-Karabakh for decades. Some 30,000 people were killed in a war in the early 1990s that left ethnic Armenians in control of the predominantly Armenian-populated region and seven adjacent districts of Azerbaijan proper.
Decades of internationally mediated talks failed to result in a diplomatic solution and the simmering conflict led to another war in 2020 in which nearly 7,000 soldiers were killed on both sides.
The 44-day war in which Azerbaijan regained all of the Armenian-controlled areas outside of Nagorno-Karabakh as well as chunks of territory inside the Soviet-era autonomous oblast proper ended with a Russia-brokered ceasefire under which Moscow deployed about 2,000 troops to the region to serve as peacekeepers.
Despite the ceasefire and publicly stated willingness of the leaders of both Armenia and Azerbaijan to work towards a negotiated peace, tensions between the two South Caucasus nations escalated in June after Azerbaijan tightened its blockade at a checkpoint installed in April on the road known as the Lachin corridor, the only link between Armenia and Nagorno-Karabakh.
Yerevan and Stepanakert view the Azerbaijani roadblock as a violation of the terms of the ceasefire agreement that they insist places the vital route solely under the control of Russian peacekeepers.
Amid severe shortages of basic foodstuffs, medical and fuel supplies experienced by Nagorno-Karabakh’s Armenians, Armenia last Friday officially asked the United Nations Security Council to hold an emergency meeting regarding the deterioration of the humanitarian situation in Nagorno-Karabakh.
The move came after the region’s ethnic Armenian leader appealed to the international community for “immediate action” to lift the de facto blockade imposed by Azerbaijan and prevent what he called “the genocide of the people of Nagorno-Karabakh.”
Azerbaijan denies blockading Nagorno-Karabakh and offers an alternative route for supplies via the town of Agdam, which is situated east of the region and is controlled by Baku.
However, Nagorno-Karabakh’s authorities have rejected that offer amid concerns in Stepanakert that the opening of the Agdam road could be a prelude to the region’s absorption by Azerbaijan.