Thursday,
Yerevan Hits Back At Moscow Over Lachin Corridor Shootout
Armenia - The building of the Armenian Foreign Ministry, Yerevan.
Armenia’s government on Thursday continued to blame Russian peacekeepers for
last week’s shooting incident in the Lachin corridor, dismissing Moscow’s
reaction to it and criticism of Yerevan.
The government insisted that Armenian border guards opened fire on June 15 to
stop Azerbaijani servicemen manning a checkpoint set up in the corridor from
placing an Azerbaijani flag on adjacent Armenian territory. Baku maintains that
they did not cross into Armenia.
Videos of the incident suggest that the Azerbaijanis were escorted by Russian
soldiers as they crossed a bridge over the Hakari river in a bid to hoist the
flag. The Armenian Foreign Ministry summoned the Russian ambassador in Yerevan
on June 16 to express “strong discontent” with the Russian peacekeepers’ actions.
The Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman, Maria Zakharova, on Wednesday defended
the peacekeepers and rejected the Armenian criticism as “absolutely groundless.”
She said the incident resulted from the “absence of a delimited
Armenian-Azerbaijani border.”
The Armenian Foreign Ministry dismissed that argument, saying that Zakharova
echoed Baku’s regular justifications of its “aggressive actions against
Armenia’s borders.”
“It is not clear why the Russian peacekeepers participated in that Azerbaijani
operation given that both the purpose and even the scene of the operation were
clearly outside the scope of the peacekeepers' functions and their zone of
responsibility,” the ministry spokeswoman, Ani Badalian, said in written
comments.
Badalian said the Hakari bridge marks the Armenian-Azerbaijani border in that
area. Instead of “looking for excuses,” Moscow should help to ensure the
conflicting parties’ full compliance with a Russian-brokered agreement that
stopped the 2020 war in Nagorno-Karabakh, added the official.
Russian peacekeepers stand guard in the town of Lachin (Berdzor), December 1,
2020.
The ceasefire agreement placed the only road connecting Karabakh to Armenia
under the control of the Russian peacekeeping contingent and committed
Azerbaijan to guaranteeing safe passage through it. Azerbaijan blocked
commercial traffic there last December before setting up the checkpoint in April
in what the Armenian side denounced as a further gross violation of the
agreement.
Right after the June 15 incident, Baku also blocked relief supplies to and
medical evacuations from Karabakh, aggravating the humanitarian crisis in the
Armenian-populated region. Zakharova called for the lifting of the blockade,
saying that Baku should not “hold Karabakh’s population hostage to political
disagreements with Yerevan.”
Prime Minister Nikol Pashinian and other Armenian officials have repeatedly
accused the Russians of not doing enough to unblock the vital road. They also
complained about a lack of broader Russian support for Armenia in the conflict
with Azerbaijan.
Karabakh Still Unable To Evacuate Patients Due To Azeri Blockade
• Artak Khulian
Nagorno-Karabakh - A Red Cross vehicle is seen outside a hospital in Stepanakert.
One week after Azerbaijan blocked the movement of humanitarian convoys through
the Lachin corridor, nearly 190 seriously ill residents of Nagorno-Karabakh are
waiting to be evacuated to hospitals in Armenia for urgent treatment, health
authorities in Stepanakert said on Thursday.
“They include persons subject to immediate evacuation, who are suffering from
oncological and cardiovascular diseases,” Angelina Isakhanian, a spokeswoman for
the Karabakh health ministry, told RFE/RL’s Armenian Service. “They need to be
evacuated in order to promptly receive proper medical treatment and avoid
further complications.”
Such medical evacuations were carried out only by the International Committee of
the Red Cross (ICRC) after Azerbaijan stopped last December commercial traffic
though the sole road connecting Karabakh to Armenia. Baku blocked them on June
15 following a shootout near an Azerbaijani checkpoint that was controversially
set up in the corridor in late April.
“There has been no progress so far,” said Eteri Musayelian, a spokeswoman for
the ICRC office in Stepanakert. “We remain in touch will all decision makers,
monitor the situation and hope to resume our movements through the Lachin
corridor as soon as the situation allows.”
The tightening of the blockade also aggravated the shortages of food, medicine
and other essential items experienced by Karabakh’s population for the last
seven months. The authorities in Stepanakert said on Monday that local hospitals
have suspended non-urgent surgeries due to the lack of drugs and other medical
supplies.
Armenia’s Health Minister Anahit Avanesian said on Thursday said health
officials in Yerevan are “in daily contact” with their Karabakh colleagues to
try to help them cope with the worsening crisis. The Armenian government is also
keeping its “international partners” posted about the situation in Karabakh, she
said.
Armenian-Azeri Talks Rescheduled For Next Week
• Astghik Bedevian
U.S. - U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken hosts talks between the Armenian
and Azerbaijani foreign ministers, May 1, 2023.
A fresh meeting of the foreign ministers of Armenia and Azerbaijan, postponed by
Baku earlier this month, will take place in Washington next week, Prime Minister
Nikol Pashinian announced on Thursday.
Foreign Minister Ararat Mirzoyan and his Azerbaijani counterpart Jeyhun Bayramov
were originally scheduled to meet there on June 12. According to the Armenian
Foreign Ministry, the talks were cancelled “at the request of the Azerbaijani
side.” The U.S. State Department insisted last week that the delay was “100
percent due to scheduling issues.”
“We must make every effort to establish peace and sign an agreement to normalize
[Armenian-Azerbaijani] relations,” said Pashinian. “The meeting of the Armenian
and Azerbaijani foreign ministers will take place in Washington next week, and
our delegation is leaving for the United States with this intent.”
“We look forward to hosting another round of talks in Washington soon as the
parties continue to pursue a peaceful future in the South Caucasus region,” a
State Department spokesman, Vedant Patel, told reporters on Wednesday. He gave
no dates for the talks.
Mirzoyan and Bayramov reported major progress towards an Armenian-Azerbaijani
peace treaty after holding four-day talks outside Washington last month.
Pashinian and Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev met together with European
Union chief Charles Michel later in May. They held two more meetings in the
following weeks and are due to meet again in July.
The two sides say that despite Pashinian’s pledge to recognize Azerbaijani
sovereignty over Nagorno-Karabakh through the peace treaty, they still disagree
on other sticking points. Tensions along the Armenian-Azerbaijani border and
“the line of contact” around Karabakh have steadily increased over the last few
weeks, with the sides accusing each other of violating the ceasefire on a
virtually daily basis.
A view of an Azerbaijani checkpoint set up at the entry to the Lachin corridor,
, by a bridge across the Hakari river, May 2, 2023.
A June 15 skirmish on the Lachin corridor led Azerbaijan to completely block
relief supplies to Karabakh through the sole road connecting the disputed region
to Armenia. The move aggravated shortages of food, medicine and other essential
items in Karabakh. Baku already blocked commercial traffic through the corridor
as well as electricity and gas supplies to Karabakh several months ago.
Pashinian again condemned the “illegal blockade” as he opened a weekly session
of his cabinet in Yerevan.
“Everything is being done [by Azerbaijan] to make the life of Armenians in
Nagorno-Karabakh impossible,” he said. “This is exactly the policy of ethnic
cleansing that we have been warning about for years.”
Pashinian at the same time renewed his calls for the launch of an “international
mechanism for Baku-Stepanakert dialogue” that would address “the issue of the
rights and security of Nagorno-Karabakh’s Armenians.”
Critics in Yerevan and Stepanakert say the restoration of Azerbaijani rule,
implicitly advocated by Pashinian, would only force the Karabakh Armenians to
flee the territory.
Reposted on ANN/Armenian News with permission from RFE/RL
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