They died when their positions around Nerkin Hand, a village in the southeastern Syunik province, came under cross-border fire early on February 13.
The head of the EU monitoring mission, Markus Ritter, said on Wednesday that the Russian side did not allow its members to visit Nerkin Hand both before and after the incident. Armen Grigorian, the pro-Western secretary of Armenia’s Security Council, echoed the claim, saying that Yerevan “will try to address the problem.”
RFE/RL’s Armenian Service asked the NSS to clarify whether the EU monitors indeed have no access to border sections where Russian border guards and military personnel are deployed.
“There are no obstacles to the observation activities of representatives of the EU mission at the sections of the Armenian-Azerbaijani border guarded by the border guard troops of the NSS,” the security agency said in a written reply.
“The purpose of the deployment of Russian border guards on the Armenian-Azerbaijani border is to monitor and take measures aimed at resolving possible conflicts peacefully,” added the statement.
Grigorian also blamed the Russians for Azerbaijan’s deadly ceasefire violation. “Russia is present there and it failed to prevent the incident,” he said.
Narek Ghahramanian, a Syunik-based parliamentarian representing Armenia’s ruling Civil Contract party, insisted on Thursday that “there is no Russian presence” in or around Nerkin Hand. There is only a Russian checkpoint on a road leading to Nerkin Hand, Ghahramanian said, adding that he has never had trouble visiting the remote village.
Russia deployed troops to Syunik during and shortly after the 2020 war in Nagorno-Karabakh to help the Armenian military defend the strategic region against possible Azerbaijani attacks. Russian-Armenian relations have significantly deteriorated since then, with Yerevan accusing Moscow of not honoring its security commitments to Armenia.