Armenia responded positively on Friday to a call by France, Russia and the United States for a cease-fire between its forces and the Azerbaijani forces, which continue to clash over the breakaway region of Nagorno-Karabakh in an ongoing conflict that is threatening to escalate into all-out war.
Armenia is “ready to engage” with the OSCE Minsk Group “to reestablish a cease-fire regime based on the 1994-1995 agreements,” the country’s Foreign Ministry said in a statement Friday.
Azerbaijan has not yet responded to the call. Both sides had previously dismissed the demands for a truce in the disputed region, where fighting has escalated in recent days to levels not seen since the 1990s.
A woman collects drinking water from a spring on a street during the ongoing fighting between Armenia and Azerbaijan, in the breakaway Nagorno-Karabakh’s main city of Stepanakert, Oct 2, 2020.
Azerbaijani forces struck Stepanakert, the main city in Azerbaijan’s breakaway region, wounding “many” people on Friday, an Armenian official said as fighting continued for a sixth day.
Warning from France
Meanwhile, French Foreign Minister Jean-Yves Le Drian warned against the risks of an “internationalization” and “out of control” escalation of hostilities between the two countries.
Le Drian called his Azerbaijani and Armenian counterparts and told them that failure to halt the fighting would “bring the risk of an out of control escalation,” according to a statement by his office.
In a joint statement as co-chairs of the OSCE Minsk Group, which is tasked with finding a peaceful solution, the French, Russians and Americans called for “an immediate cessation of hostilities” between Armenia and Azerbaijan and for leaders of the two countries to “commit without delay to resuming substantive negotiations.”
Russia also has offered to host the Armenian and Azerbaijani foreign ministers for talks to end the fighting that erupted Sunday, reviving a decades-long conflict over the landlocked enclave. The region is within Azerbaijan’s borders but is governed by ethnic Armenians and supported by the Armenian government.
A mannequin inside a shop damaged by shelling during fighting over the breakaway region of Nagorno-Karabakh in Agdam, Azerbaijan, Oct. 1, 2020.
Dozens of people have been killed and hundreds of others injured in the fighting, which has since spread to areas outside the enclave’s borders.
The conflict intensified on Tuesday as Yerevan claimed a Turkish F-16 fighter jet shot down one of its SU-25 fighter planes in Armenian airspace, killing the pilot.
Turkey and Azerbaijan denied the claims.
Turkey, Russia
Speaking on Russian state television Tuesday, Azerbaijan’s President Ilham Aliyev and Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan both rejected the possibility of talks, despite urgent appeals to end the violence.
Also this week, the United Nations Security Council called for an immediate halt to the hostilities, as did a spokesman for U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres and the U.S. State Department.
Armenia and Azerbaijan declared martial law and troop mobilizations on Sunday amid fighting over Nagorno-Karabakh.
The enclave seceded from Azerbaijan during the Nagorno-Karabakh War that ended in 1994 but has not been recognized by any country as an independent republic.
A war between the two former Soviet republics could also involve regional powers Turkey and Russia, which has a defense agreement with Armenia. The Turkish government supports its own ethnic Turkic kin in Azerbaijan. Moscow is a vital supporter of Yerevan and maintains a military base in Armenia.
MOSCOW (Reuters) – Russian President Vladimir Putin and Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan held a third phone call in six days since fighting broke out between Azerbaijan and ethnic Armenians over the territory of Nagorno-Karabakh, the Kremlin said on Friday.
Putin and Pashinyan expressed serious concern about the involvement of what the Kremlin termed illegal armed groups from the Middle East in the fighting.
Putin reiterated the need for an immediate ceasefire, the Kremlin added.
(Reporting by Polina Ivanova and Darya Korsunskaya; Writing by Alexander Marrow; Editing by Mark Trevelyan)
With Turkey and Azerbaijan launching a war against Armenia and the de facto Republic of Artsakh, a mother named Ellada, has given birth to a beautiful and healthy baby boy.
“Hello, world! The youngest Artsakhtsi was born a few hours ago in Stepanakert! Baby feels just fine!” the Republic of Artsakh’s official Twitter account wrote yesterday.
Hello, world!
The youngest #Artsakh‘tsi was born a few hours ago in #Stepanakert! Baby feels just fine! #ArtsakhStrong pic.twitter.com/PuR4y6PecB— Artsakh (@ArtsakhOfficial) October 1, 2020
The Artsakh Twitter account, which is maintained by the Digital Diplomacy team of Artsakh’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs, also revealed that the baby’s name is David.
It was not lost that the mother’s name, Ellada, means Greece in Greek.
Baby David is the second known birth since Azerbaijan began its invasion attempt of Artsakh on Sunday.
Days ago, a woman wounded by Azerbaijani shelling gave birth to another beautiful baby boy named Monte Derdzyan, as previously reported by Greek City Times.
However, despite the death and devastation occurring in Artsakh, these two miracles have not been able to soften the hearts of many Azerbaijani’s, with many Twitter users openly admitting that they would kill Armenian baby’s.
Artsakh, which has been an integral part of Armenia since at least 500BC, was gifted to Azerbaijan by the Soviets in the hope that it would sway Turkey to also become a Soviet Republic.
The Azeris, as ethnic and linguistic kin to the Turks, have always been a minority in Artsakh when they begin arriving in the region only a few hundred years ago. Yet, despite the rich Armenian history of the region, and it always having maintained an Armenian-majority, Azerbaijan feels entitled to the region.
Azerbaijani Twitter users showed their full ugliness when @djafarlees, whose account has since been deleted, posed the question “would you kill an Armenian baby?”
Besides the shocking question, the answers that followed proved to be even more reprehensible and disgusting, further reinforcing the idea that Turkey and Azerbaijan are attempting a second Armenian genocide.
Twitter user @exi_agayev wrote “I will kill without blinking. Today’s Armenian baby will grow up tomorrow and kill our babies.”
Armenia and Azerbaijan refuse to discuss diplomatic agreement to the conflict, which is too deep and toxic, too historic, with nationalist roots
KONYA, Turkey
Turkey’s president on Friday vowed to continue the struggle for Azerbaijan’s territory of Upper Karabakh until it is freed from Armenian occupation.
As tensions run high amid a recent flare-up in the conflict between Baku and Yerevan, Recep Tayyip Erdogan reiterated Turkey’s full support for Azerbaijan during a speech at the inauguration of a city hospital in the central Turkish province of Konya.
Armenia has once again attacked Azerbaijani territories while the issue of Karabakh, which Yerevan occupied with “despicable massacres,” is yet to be resolved, Erdogan said.
“But, this time [Armenia] has encountered an unexpected end,” he added.
“The brotherly state of Azerbaijan has started a great operation both to defend its own territories and to liberate the occupied Karabakh.”
Erdogan underlined that the Azerbaijani army, which has so far been advancing against Armenian forces, has liberated many areas from occupation.
“Turkey stands with and will continue to stand with friendly and brotherly Azerbaijan with all our means and all our heart,” he said.
The eruption of crisis zones in areas adjacent to Turkey from Syria to the Mediterranean to the Caucasus points to attempts to hold Turkey under siege, Erdogan added.
Border clashes first broke out on Sunday when Armenian forces targeted Azerbaijani civilian settlements and military positions, leading to casualties.
Azerbaijan’s parliament declared a state of war in some of its cities and regions following Armenia’s border violations and attacks in the occupied Upper Karabakh, also known as Nagorno-Karabakh.
On Monday, Azerbaijan declared partial military mobilization amid the clashes.
Upper Karabakh conflict
Relations between the two former Soviet nations have been tense since 1991, when the Armenian military occupied Upper Karabakh, an internationally recognized territory of Azerbaijan.
Four UN Security Council and two UN General Assembly resolutions, as well as many international organizations, demand the withdrawal of the occupying forces.
The OSCE Minsk Group — co-chaired by France, Russia, and the US — was formed in 1992 to find a peaceful solution to the conflict, but to no avail. A cease-fire, however, was agreed upon in 1994.
France, Russia, and NATO, among others, have urged an immediate halt to clashes in the occupied region.
Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan accused the Turkish military of controlling Azerbaijan’s military operations in Nagorno-Karabakh, and alleged that Ankara has deployed jihadist mercenaries from Syria to support the fight against Armenian forces.
Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has urged Baku to continue to pursue its offensive in Nagorno-Karabakh.
“Azerbaijan has already liberated a vast territory. I hope it will keep fighting until all its lands in Karabakh are freed,” Erdogan said in an address broadcast on Twitter on Friday.
The Turkish president noted that Turkey supports “friendly and fraternal Azerbaijan in all possible ways,” and would continue to do so.
Earlier, in an interview with the Globe and Mail, Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan said that Turkey’s exit from the southern Caucasus would be a necessary condition for peace in Nagorno-Karabakh.
Pashinyan added that it was now up to Turkey’s NATO allies to provide an explanation as to why Ankara is involved in the Karabakh conflict.
“Turkey’s military personnel and the Turkish armed forces are directly engaged in the hostilities. Turkey’s NATO allies must explain why these [Turkish] F-16 jets are shelling towns and villages in Nagorno-Karabakh and killing civilian populations,” he said, referring to reports from earlier this week that an Armenian air force jet had downed a Turkish fighter. Turkey denied those reports.
Pashinyan suggested that Western countries should rethink the sale of arms to Turkey amid reports that they were being used by the Azerbaijani side in Nagorno-Karabakh.
In a series of tweets, Pashinyan also accused Ankara of returning to the South Caucasus “to continue the Armenian Genocide,” and said that “Armenia and the Armenians of the South Caucasus are the last remaining obstacle in the way of continued Turkish expansion toward the North, the North-East, and the East, and the realisation of its imperialistic dream.”
Armenia and the Armenians of the South #Caucasus are the last remaining obstacle on the way of continued #Turkish expansion towards the North, the North-East, and the East, and the realisation of its imperialistic dream.
— Nikol Pashinyan (@NikolPashinyan) October 1, 2020
In a recent interview with Le Figaro, Pashinyan said that Yerevan has evidence that the Turkish military was controlling Azerbaijan’s military operations in Nagorno-Karabakh, and suggested that Ankara be kicked out of the Organisation for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE) because of its ‘aggressive and biased’ position on the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict.
On Thursday, Erdogan said the OSCE Minsk Group which is responsible for negotiating a solution to the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict has no right to call for a ceasefire, and said that the organisation should demand that Armenia put an end to its “occupation” of the breakaway Azerbaijani region instead.
Both Paris and Moscow have expressed concern over reports of illegal armed formations being transferred to Nagorno-Karabakh by Turkey from Middle Eastern conflict zones including Syria and Libya to take part in the fighting against Armenian forces.
In his remarks Friday, Pashinyan reiterated the claims about the transfer of jihadist militias, and stressed that the population of Nagorno-Karabakh cannot be “unprotected, facing terrorists and extremists.”
Nagorno-Kharabakh: Over 30 Years of Conflict
The latest bout of fighting in the contested south Caucasus region of Nagorno-Karabakh began Sunday, with each side blaming the other for starting the shooting. In five days, as many as 3,600 soldiers and civilians from both sides have been killed, with an array of military equipment, as well as civilian infrastructure, destroyed or damaged.
The Nagorno-Karabakh conflict has its origins in Soviet days. In the late 1980s, the autonomous majority-Armenian region attempted to secede from the Azerbaijani Soviet Socialist Republic and join the Armenian Soviet Socialist Republic. Azerbaijan’s capital Baku tried to prevent this, and in 1991 abolished the region’s autonomous status. After the USSR was dismantled in the early 1990s, Armenian-supported forces from the self-proclaimed Karabakh Republic of Artsakh waged a brutal two-year war with the Azerbaijani military, which led to the death of tens of thousands and the displacement of more than a million Armenians and Azeris across the region. A shaky ceasefire facilitated by Russia was put in place in 1994, but has been broken repeatedly in the years that followed.
October 2, 202012:41
The discovery of Serbian ammunition among Armenian forces in July put Belgrade’s ties with Baku in serious trouble. The Azerbaijani Foreign Ministry summoned Serbia’s chargé d’affaires in Baku for a grilling. This episode was bad news for Serbia; Azerbaijan is one of the six countries with which Serbia has a strategic partnership agreement, alongside Russia, China, the UAE, France and Italy.
Over the past 12 years, Serbia and Azerbaijan have supported each other in their respective territorial disputes. Baku has supported the Serbian case on Kosovo, and Belgrade has supported Baku on Nagorno-Karabakh.
Azerbaijan has also provided Serbia with infrastructural credit lines, and an Azerbaijani construction firm, AzVirt, completed the Ljig-Preljina section of the Corridor XI highway in Serbia.
AzVirt will also construct the Ruma-Sabac highway and the Sabac-Loznica expressway, as agreed in 2019. Azerbaijan donated more than 400,000 euros of aid to Serbia during the 2014 floods, and in 2020, amid the COVID-19 pandemic, donated medical equipment.
Belgrade was right to be worried about Baku’s reaction to the discovery of Serbian ammunition.
The man behind the arms transfer to Armenia, Slobodan Tesic, is one of Serbia’s largest arms dealers and a financier of Serbian President Aleksandar Vucic and the ruling Serbian Progressive Party, SNS.
Tesic’s company, Vektura Trans, was supplying Armenia with ammunition manufactured by the Serbian ammunition factory, Krusik.
Last year, both Tesic and Krusik were caught up in a major scandal following claims that several companies owned by Tesic were buying ammunition from Krusik at a discounted price. These mortar shells were then sold to buyers in Saudi Arabia and transferred to Islamist militants in Yemen.
Tesic reached an agreement with Armenia in 2018 the same year that President Vucic visited Azerbaijan to sign the strategic partnership.
Serbia quickly mended ties with Azerbaijan, as Vucic considers his international contacts a significant asset. In early August, he had a telephone conversation with Azerbaijan President Ilham Aliyev in which he expressed regret over the deaths of the Azerbaijani soldiers.
To repair relations, Vucic promised to send a high-level delegation to Azerbaijan to investigate the matter. He also invited Aliyev to visit Serbia.
However, Belgrade risked angering other geopolitical players engaged in the Caucasus who were then busy elsewhere, but who might not look kindly on the presence of Serbian arms in this unpredictable conflict zone.
One of those players in Russia. Moscow, although the main diplomatic and military backer of Armenia, is also supplying weaponry to Azerbaijan, in order to maximise President Putin’s role as kingmaker in the conflict.
Back in 2006 Serbia froze arms exports to Azerbaijan, Armenia, Georgia and Moldova, taking into account the call for an arms embargo issued by the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe, OSCE.
Then, it needed to avoid entanglements with Nagorno-Karabakh, while burdened with the Kosovo dispute, and avoid angering Moscow on whose UN Security Council veto it relied vis-a-vis Kosovo.
Moscow is not fond of the idea of Serbia messing with its own backyard by delivering weapons there, particularly as the ammunition to Armenia was shipped through an offshore company in Moldova and then though Georgia.
Now, however, Serbia’s relations with Russia are past their prime, as was made evident in Serbia’s lukewarm reception of Russian medical aid during the COVID-19 pandemic. Belgrade is replacing Moscow with Beijing as its primary Eastern partner.
At the same time, Moscow is unhappy about Vucic trying to resolve the Kosovo issue under US President Donald Trump’s guidance, which would eliminate one of the few sources of Russian influence in the Balkans. The pro-government media in Serbia are now willing to smear Russia in connection with an alleged plot to overthrow the government in Belgrade.
Putin and Russia, of course, have bigger worries. Like other world leaders, Putin has to deal with the COVID-19 pandemic. Even before that arrived, a Russian economy reliant on energy exports had to deal with the global crash in oil prices.
Add to that Russia’s involvement in the Syrian and Libyan conflicts, as well as a brewing crisis on Russia’s western border in Belarus, and a Serbian arms dealer doing business in Armenia might merely look like a footnote.
However, with all the problems happening behind the scenes in Serbo-Russian relations, it would seem advisable for Belgrade to distance itself from the Armenian affair by the time Putin visits Belgrade again.
Turkey and Israel are also among Serbia’s partners who might not look benevolently on the Armenian affair.
Serbia’s partnership with Turkey has strengthened in the last couple of years. Economic and trade ties have grown. Serbia sees the partnership with Turkey as useful in engaging the Muslim communities in the Balkans, and Turkey is important for the Balkan countries because of its importance in controlling migration flows.
However, Turkey is also the main ally of Azerbaijan in its conflict with Armenia and has been increasing its involvement in the Caucasus to counter Russia’s engagement in Syria and Libya.
Turkey’s involvement with wars in Syria and Libya, the Kurdish issue, strategic rivalries in the Eastern Mediterranean, and the domestic crisis of Turkish regime stopped Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan from raising the ammunition scandal with Belgrade.
Israel has also been quiet, but Serbia, while openly expressing its desire to improve ties with Israel, should not forget that Israel is supplying drones to Azerbaijan. Israel’s price in Serbia is also higher as it is an important gateway for Belgrade to access the White House.
Last but not least, the US has an uncomfortable history with Tesic. The former US diplomat and ranking official of the Arms Control Association Thomas Countryman told the Serbian media in 2019 that the US had been monitoring Tesic and his transactions for the past 20 years. In 2009, US diplomatic cables pointed to his arms sales in Yemen. The UN imposed a travel ban on Tesic for violating arms exports to Liberia that lasted ten years. In late 2019 the US Treasury Department placed nine individuals and three entities associated with Tesic under sanctions.
Serbia itself risks the prospect of US sanctions if news like the one on ammunition supplies to Armenia become more frequent. Belgrade fears the devastating effect of US sanctions; in 2019 it gave up on further arms purchases from Russia to avoid such sanctions. At the moment, the Trump administration is engaged in mediating the Kosovo dispute. Given that Trump is Serbia’s best chance of getting a less painful settlement on Kosovo, Serbia risks testing US patience by allowing arms exports to conflict zones.
In July, the big powers did not give Serbia a hard time over its arms deliveries to Armenia. Belgrade might not be so lucky this time. The frozen conflict in the Caucasus is no longer frozen. Since September the two nations of the South Caucasus have been engaged in the most dangerous level of combat since the fighting in 2016, with casualties rising daily.
Amid these renewed hostilities, the Azerbaijani defence portal Azeri Defence run the story of Armenian forces using Serbian-made 122mm G-2000 missiles to fire on the Azerbaijani city of Fuzuli. The portal claimed this as proof of Serbia’s insincerity, as the discovered rockets show that Armenia had imported not just Serbia ammunition and mortars but ordnance of a higher calibre.
Serbian dismisses such allegations. As President Vucic told the media: “I have heard the nonsense of various people about how they kill with Serbian weapons. There are no Serbian weapons there … Tanks, planes, drones… None of that is ours. … We wish them peace, they are our two brotherly peoples,” he said.
“We hope that they will be able to get out of the conflict,” he added. Both Serbian-based and international inquiries on the latest allegations have yet to be done.
However, unlike the July fighting, the world is now paying much closer attention to the conflict. The US, Russia and France who are co-chairing the Minsk Group, a conflict resolution mechanism within the OSCE, are demanding a ceasefire. Russia’s Putin is also engaged with his Turkish counterpart, Erdogan, in finding a solution.
This is the same Erdogan that Vucic met in Istanbul in September when Turkey was upset by Serbia’s decision to move its embassy in Israel from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem. Last time round, Serbia went unpunished. This time, Serbia should be careful not to stick its neck out, now the eyes of the world are looking at the Caucasus.
Vuk Vuksanovic is a Ph.D. researcher in international relations at the London School of Economics and Political Science (LSE) and an associate of LSE IDEAS, LSE’s foreign policy think tank. He writes widely on modern foreign and security policy issues and is on Twitter @v_vuksanovic.
The opinions expressed in the Comment section are those of the authors only and do not necessarily reflect the views of BIRN
Pakistan has refuted claims that its army was involved in the Armenia-Azerbaijan conflict and fighting alongside Azerbaijan. Pakistan’s Foreign Office has said that the claims were “irresponsible”. He was quoted by Dawn.
On Thursday, Armenia’s Deputy Foreign Minister Avet Adonts spoke exclusively with WION ands said that he “can’t exclude the possibility” of Pakistani fighters fighting on ground alongside Azerbaijan along with “mercenaries operating in Azerbaijan”. He also added that it would not be a surprise for them. He even recalled how Pakistani fighters were present in Nagorno-Karabakh when war erupted in 1990s.
Zahid Hafeez Chaudri, Spokesperson of Pakistan’s Foreign Office said that the country remained deeply concerned over the conflict that has erupted in Nagorno Karabah region.
Pakistan supports position of Azerbaijan in the ongoing conflict. Armenian President Ilham Aliyev has even thanked Pakistan Turkey and Afghanistan for their support
The hostilities between Azerbaijan and Armenia have not ceased and tensions are high still.
Also Read | Armenia says ready to engage with mediators for Nagorno-Karabakh ceasefire
Azerbaijan said Friday that Armenia must withdraw troops from the disputed Nagorny Karabakh region in order to end days of fighting, after France, Russia and the United States urged a ceasefire.
“If Armenia wants to see an end of this escalation of the situation, the ball is in the court of Armenia,” Hikmet Hajiyev, foreign affairs aide to the president of Azerbaijan, told reporters during an online press conference.
“Armenia must ends its occupation,” of Karabakh, he said. “Enough is enough.”
Fighting between Armenian and Azerbaijani forces erupted Sunday over a longstanding territorial dispute centering around Karabakh.
Nearly 200 people including civilians have been killed in the fighting despite growing international calls for a ceasefire.