Artsakh forces downed an Azerbaijani Orbiter-3 drone, which is made in Israel
Artsakh Air Defense units on Saturday shot down an Azerbaijani drone, which was on a reconnaissance mission in the northeastern direction of the Artsakh-Azerbaijan border.
The Artsakh Defense Ministry reported that at 6:38 a.m. local time on Saturday an Orbiter-3 unmanned aerial vehicle—drone. The Orbiter-3 is made by Israel’s Aeronautics Defense Systems, which was embroiled in legal and ethical controversy in 2017 when Azerbaijan reportedly forced the company’s technicians to test its equipment on live targets in Artsakh.
The elite units of the Defense Army continue to keep the situation on the border under full control, to confidently protect the air and land positions of the republic, the Artsakh Defense Ministry said.
This attempt to breach Artsakh’s airspace comes as Azerbaijani forces brazenly attempted to attack military and civilian targets in Armenia’s Tavush Province, resulting in massive losses for Azerbaijani forces, among them a high-ranking army general.
According to Armenia’s Defense Ministry, the situation on the Armenia-Azerbaijan border is relatively calm and new attempts to attack Armenia have been reported.
Meanwhile, President Ilham Aliyev of Azerbaijan, on Thursday threatened to end the Karabakh peace talks, calling the international mediators, the OSCE Minsk Group co-chairs’s efforts “meaningless.”
A day earlier, Baku threatened to attack the Metsamor Nuclear Plant outside Yerevan as retaliation for what it termed as “Armenian aggression.”
At the same time, in what seemed like a government sanctioned protest took place in Baku’s Azadliq Square, where an estimated crowd of 50,000 people called for an all out war against Armenia.
Also, after weeks of pressure on its foreign ministry, Aliyev fired his long-time foreign minister Elmar Mammadyarov, who had been a fixture at the peace talks since 2004. Aliyev appointed his education minister, Jeyhun Bayramov as the country’s new top diplomat.