Putin, Macron drawn into Armenia spat

Russia and France have stepped into the most serious crisis between Armenia and Azerbaijan since last year’s war as a deepening border dispute threatens to erupt into fresh confrontation.

Armenia’s Acting Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan told Russian President Vladimir Putin about the “infiltration” of an estimated 250 Azerbaijani troops 2 miles into his country’s southern Syunik province in a phone call, his office said Friday. The situation is “explosive” and he’s asked fellow members of a Russian-led military alliance to weigh a response, Pashinyan told Armenia’s National Security Council.

Azerbaijan denied invading Armenia. Its troops are engaged in a “difficult technical process accompanied by disputes” to demarcate their shared border following the 44-day war, the Foreign Ministry in Baku said in an email.

Pashinyan didn’t ask Putin for assistance though he expressed “extreme concern” about the border situation, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov told reporters Friday. “This concern was shared by President Putin,” who emphasized the importance of maintaining a truce between the two sides, Peskov said.

French President Emmanuel Macron sided with Armenia and called on Azerbaijan to “withdraw immediately” from Armenian territory in a tweet after a phone talk with Pashinyan.

With backing from Turkey’s military, Azerbaijan took control of part of the disputed territory of Nagorno-Karabakh and reclaimed seven surrounding districts occupied by Armenia since 1993 in the war that killed thousands on both sides before a Russia-brokered cease-fire halted fighting in November.

Some 2,000 Russian peacekeepers are now deployed in Nagorno-Karabakh, as Armenia and Azerbaijan work to implement terms of the truce, which include opening shared borders that in many instances haven’t been marked out since the collapse of the Soviet Union.

The U.S. is “closely following” developments on the Armenian-Azerbaijan border and urges restraint, State Department Spokesman Ned Price said on Twitter Thursday.

The U.S., Russia and France form the Minsk Group of mediators that tried and failed for decades to resolve the dispute over Nagorno-Karabakh, whose Armenian population declared independence amid the Soviet collapse. The region remained internationally-recognized as part of Azerbaijan.

Armenia has a defense pact with Russia, which has a military base in the Caucasus republic, as a member of the Collective Security Treaty Organization. The CSTO’s response is needed to prevent “a further escalation of the situation,” Pashinyan said.

Azerbaijan is “committed to easing of tensions” and has sent border commanders to the area, the Foreign Ministry said in Baku, calling Armenia’s actions provocative.

The situation “looks worrying,” Thomas de Waal, a London-based senior fellow at Carnegie Europe, wrote on Twitter. It’s “closer to new violence than to peace agreement.”

— Bloomberg News