In a weekend statement, the Azerbaijani Foreign Ministry defended Baku’s decisions to set up a checkpoint in the Lachin corridor and block relief supplies carried out through it by Russian peacekeepers. It accused the peacekeepers of not preventing Armenia’s alleged shipments of
weapons and military personnel to Karabakh and not ensuring the “withdrawal of the remnants of Armenian military units from Azerbaijani territory.”
“Armenian army units on the contrary receive assistance under the guidance of the Russian peacekeeping mission,” it said without offering proof of the allegations strongly denied by Armenia.
Baku reacted to Saturday’s statement by the Russian Foreign Ministry expressing serious concern over the worsening shortages of food, medicine and other essential supplies in Karabakh and warning of even more “dramatic” consequences of the blockade.
The Azerbaijani side dismissed those concerns, saying that Karabakh can be supplied with basic necessities from Azerbaijan proper and the town of Aghdam in particular. Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev apparently insisted on this idea during his latest trilateral meeting with Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinian and European Union head Charles Michel held in Brussels on Saturday.
Michel said after the talks that as well as urging Aliyev to reopen the Lachin corridor he “noted Azerbaijan’s willingness to equally provide humanitarian supplies via Aghdam.”
“I see both options as important and encouraged the humanitarian deliveries from both sides to ensure the needs of the population are met,” he said.
Karabakh’s leadership rejected the Aghdam option earlier, saying that it is a ploy designed to facilitate the restoration of Azerbaijani control over Karabakh.
Michel’s reference to it was constructed by some Armenian analysts and critics of Pashinian’s government as a serious setback for the Armenian side. One of those analysts, Tigran Grigorian, on Monday decried “the inactivity and incompetence of the Armenian diplomacy.”
“By including such a point in the statement [by Michel] and putting that point on the same plane with the issue of unblocking the Lachin corridor … Azerbaijan will be able to nullify the previous decisions of various international structures -- and the International Court of Justice (ICJ) in particular -- regarding the unblocking of the Lachin corridor,” Grigorian told RFE/RL’s Armenian Service.
The ICJ court ordered Azerbaijan in February to “take all measures at its disposal to ensure unimpeded movement of persons, vehicles, and cargo along the Lachin Corridor in both directions.” The European Court of Human Rights issued a similar order in December.
The Armenian Foreign Ministry pointed to those injunctions on Monday. “Other international actors should follow this line,” the ministry spokeswoman, Ani Badalian, said in a Twitter post that may have been a veiled rebuke of Michel.