The government-linked Azerbaijan Red Crescent announced in the morning that it is sending two trucks loaded with 40 tons flour to the town of Aghdam adjacent to Karabakh and hopes that the Karabakh Armenian will accept the shipment. It also expressed readiness to deliver other basic foodstuffs.
The Azerbaijani offer came as Karabakh struggled with a worsening shortage of bread that has become the main staple food in Stepanakert and other Karabakh towns since Baku tightened the blockade in mid-June.
A spokeswoman for Arayik Harutiunian, the Karabakh president, rejected the offer as a ploy designed to deflect international attention from the blockade and a serious humanitarian crisis caused by it. Lusine Avanesian said Baku should instead allow renewed traffic through the only road connecting Karabakh to Armenia in line with a Russian-brokered ceasefire that stopped the 2020 Armenian-Azerbaijani war.
“If the Azerbaijani authorities are really interested in ending the worst humanitarian disaster of the people of Artsakh and stopping their genocide, then instead of playing false philanthropy they should stop blocking the restoration of supplies to Artsakh through the Lachin Corridor envisaged by the tripartite declaration of November 9, 2020 and the orders of the International Court of Justice,” Avanesian told the Artsakhpress news agency.
Harutiunian likewise ruled out accepting any aid through the Aghdam route when he addressed hundreds of people who rallied in Stepanakert’s central square on Monday night.
“Only one road will be functioning: the Lachin road. We’re not going bring in food from any other places,” Harutiunian told the angry crowd in a speech repeatedly interrupted by jeers and heckling. This was the only part of his speech that drew applause.
The spontaneous rally was triggered by the arrests at an Azerbaijani checkpoint in the Lachin corridor of three Karabakh men who traveled to Armenia in a convoy escorted by Russian peacekeepers. The Azerbaijani authorities accused them of desecrating an Azerbaijani flag in 2021.
The protesters demanded that the authorities in Stepanakert take urgent measures to secure the release of the young men. Harutiunian addressed them after midnight following an emergency meeting with his top aides as well as other leading Karabakh politicians.
The Karabakh leader said the question of his resignation, which has repeatedly come to the fore during the Azerbaijani blockade, was also on the agenda. He said he will decide in the coming days whether or not to step down.