The five-kilometer-wide corridor became Karabakh’s sole overland link to Armenia following the 2020 war stopped by a Russian-brokered ceasefire agreement. The agreement called for the construction of a new Armenia-Karabakh highway bypassing the town of Lachin.
Azerbaijan regained control of the town last August after building a 32-kilomer-long highway linking up to a new Armenian section of the corridor which was supposed to be completed by April 1, 2023. Azerbaijani troops redeployed on Thursday morning to more parts of the Lachin district adjacent to the Armenian border, blocking the old corridor section.
Armenia’s government and National Security Service (NSS) downplayed the redeployment, saying that the new Armenian road leading to Karabakh is already passable. However, the NSS also said that the Azerbaijani troops occupied Armenian territory in the process.
“In some places, the Azerbaijani side, without waiting for pre-arranged [border] adjustments, started to position itself and carried out fortification works,” said the statement. “According to the Armenian side’s calculations, there are five such points where the Azerbaijani side crossed the border and advanced 100 to 300 meters [into [Armenian territory.]”
The NSS added that the two sides agreed that their cartographers will try to “ascertain the situation.” Armenia is keen “to not allow an escalation,” emphasized the security service.
The Azerbaijani forces moved very close to the Armenian border village of Tegh. According to local government officials and farmers, they now control a large part of the community’s agricultural land and pastures.
One of the Tegh residents, who did not want to be identified, said he discovered on Thursday that he no longer has access to his 2-hectare wheat field.
“They [Azerbaijani soldiers] are now uprooting my wheat and digging trenches there,” he told RFE/RL’s Armenian Service.
Armenia - A road to Nagorno-Karabakh passing through the village of Tegh.
The development left many in the country wondering why Yerevan did not act to prevent the loss of what it regards as Armenia’s internationally recognized territory.
Pashinian stressed that the Armenian military did not lose any of its border posts in that area.
“The Armenian army had no positions at the border section in question because such positions are set up not on the border line but on nearby strategic heights,” the NSS said for its part.
Leaders of Armenia’s two main opposition groups dismissed these explanations. They said that Pashinian’s administration could and should have prevented Azerbaijani from making the fresh territorial gains.
“Clearly, this is a major failure by the Armenia authorities in both the political and military fields,” said Seyran Ohanian, a former defense minister who now leads the parliamentary group of the Hayastan alliance.
“We have a situation for which the authorities and Nikol Pashinian personally are responsible because … the change of the [corridor] route presupposed political decisions that were not made,” agreed Tigran Abrahamian of the Pativ Unem bloc.
Abrahamian argued that Pashinian’s government itself has repeatedly accused Baku of violating Armenian-Azerbaijani agreements and launching military aggression against Armenia after the 2020 war.
“Objectively, no Armenian government could have had reason to believe that Azerbaijan would honor an oral agreement [reached in August 2022 and cited by the NSS,]” he told reporters.
Senior lawmakers representing the ruling Civil Contract party refused to comment on the opposition accusations.
Opposition leaders also blamed Pashinian’s government for much bigger territorial losses suffered by Armenia during border clashes with Azerbaijan in May 2021 and September 2022. They regularly charge that it cannot defend the country and rebuild its armed forces after mishandling the disastrous 2020 war. Pashinian and his political allies deny this.