The Azerbaijani side used artillery weapons of various calibers, as well as 60, 82 and 120 mm mortars and hand-held antitank grenade launchers, as it kept violating the agreement on ceasefire along the line of contact with the Karabakh forces last night, the NKR Defense Ministry reports.
The front divisions of the NKR Defense Army showed restraint and resorted to response actions only in case of extreme necessity.
By Raffi K. Hovannisian
Stepanakert, Mountainous Karabagh — I no longer know what to do on April 24—or where to go. This is the day Armenians across the globe commemorate the genocide in 1915 that destroyed the Armenian people and its homeland of thousands of years.
Those killing fields, the homes of my grandparents, are located in historic western Armenia—now eastern Turkey. But a century later, this very region has erupted in all-out war. Turkish forces are on the offensive again, this time, Armenians having been eliminated, against an empowered Kurdish majority. For an Armenian, it is a difficult place to travel to on April 24—to assert our memory amid the bombshells and havoc of another people’s national struggle.
In Washington earlier this April, I was taking several meetings with the Department of State and at other offices. As it is known, official Turkey still denies that genocide was ever committed. And it expects its “strategic partners,” such as the United States, not to call it by that name.
In the past week, respected national newspapers shamefully published Turkish ads denying the Armenian Genocide. Denialist billboards went up, too. And in his address this April, President Obama called the events of 1915 everything but “genocide.” You can see why Washington, too, is also a difficult place to be on April 24.
So I decided to return to Yerevan, Armenia, for April 24. To be clear this is modern-day Armenia—just a sliver of the great homeland which survived 1915, was absorbed into the Soviet Union, and eventually declared independence in 1991. This is the Armenia, whose foreign minister I was and whose flag I raised at the United Nations. Here millions of Armenians and their guests—this year George Clooney, Charles Aznavour, and others—march up to the Eternal Flame of 1915 and lay flowers every April 24.
But even Yerevan, this year, was a difficult place to be on April 24. Because the minds of Armenians were elsewhere. They were drifting a couple hundred miles southeast—where, even as we commemorated the victims of the Armenian Genocide, the groundworks of a new genocide against us were being laid.
A lot has been written about Nagorno (Mountainous) Karabagh, or Artsakh; people have different opinions of it. But the simplest and most irrefutable narrative is this: For as long as we know, since the ancient Armenian kingdoms, Mountainous Karabagh has been an Armenian cultural cradle. Even when Josef Stalin and his Bolshevik entourage, in order to placate nationalist Turkey, unilaterally transferred these lands from Soviet Armenia and subjected them as an autonomous region to Soviet Azerbaijani rule in 1923, Mountainous Karabagh—unlike Nakhichevan to its west—managed to keep its majority Armenian population.
As the USSR collapsed and the people of Artsakh voted by lawful referendum to declare their own independence from Azerbaijan, Baku in turn unleashed all-out war—and lost. As sovereign Armenia’s foreign minister, I helped launch the peace process in Helsinki in March 1992.
Twenty years later, this April, Turkey-allied Azerbaijan launched its largest campaign of racist aggression since the Russian-brokered ceasefire that had been signed in 1994 among Azerbaijan, Mountainous Karabagh, and Armenia. For four days, Azerbaijan’s drones and helicopters bombed peaceful Christian Armenian civilians. Soldier and villager alike were taken captive and, ISIS-style, beheaded alive in such inhumanity that even transcends the definition of a war crime.
From Stepanakert, the capital of Mountainous Karabagh, I can now report the following. Azerbaijan’s belligerent conduct, a hell-bent design developed over the years to wipe out not only Karabagh but Armenia in toto, renders a negotiated settlement no longer possible, and it is imperatively time for the international community to take a stance in equivalent application of international law and, yes, in pursuit of guaranteeing strategic security interests.
The United States, Europe, and their partners to the east and south must officially recognize the Mountainous Karabagh Republic within its constitutional frontiers. It is no less deserving of recognition, under the 1933 Montevideo Convention on the Rights and Duties of States, than Kosovo, East Timor, Eritrea, or South Sudan.
It gives no consolation that Azerbaijan is a blatant clan-based dictatorship or that official Ankara is in the throes of realizing xenophobic rhetoric domestically and in foreign affairs, but it would help along the way if the Republic of Armenia itself, naturally among the first to recognize, put its own democratic house in order, rooting out the corruption of its own authorities, systemic fraud and falsification, stolen elections and political prisoners.
This is a complicated issue indeed; let us not pretend otherwise. But on the verge of a new genocide this April, let us also not mince words and find pretext for inaction.
Armenians living peacefully in Mountainous Karabagh were murdered this April. They will be murdered again. Do you recognize a genocide when you see it?
The losses of the Azerbaijani side in the recent clashed along the Nagorno Karabakh line of contact are estimated to exceed 800, OSTKRAFT analytical center reports, quoting sources at the Azerbaijani General Staff.
According to the report, it was the great number of losses that made Azerbaijan stop the aggression and return to the negotiating table.
“Judging from this data, the words of Azerbaijani Ambassador to Russia about the readiness of his country to solve the Karabakh issue in a military way look deeply untenable, as Azerbaijan has neither power, not means for that,” the analysis says.
According to the report, the only thing Azerbaijan provoked with its unreasonable actions is the possible recognition of Nagorno Karabakh by Armenia.
Armenian Defense Minister Seyran Ohanyan received today Iran’s Ambassador Extraordinary and Plenipotentiary to Armenia Seyed Kazem Sajadi. The parties discussed issues related to bilateral cooperation and regional security.
The Armenian Defense Minister informed the Ambassador about the agreements reached in Moscow with his Azerbaijani counterpart.
Minister Ohanyan also briefed Ambassador Sajadi on the situation around Nagorno Karabakh and the recent aggressive actions of Azerbaijan.
Seyed Kazem Sajadi expressed his concern over the current situation and pledged his willingness to make all efforts to maintain peace and stability.
The Iranian Ambassador emphasized the importance of bilateral cooperation in the defense sphere.
On a visit to Helsinki, Armenian Foreign Minister Edward Nalbandian met with Ilkka Kanerva, President of the OSCE Parliamentary Assembly.
Minister Nalbandian briefed the OSCE PA President on the consequences of the Azerbaijani aggression against Artsakh, the efforts of Armenia and the OSCE Minsk Group Co-Chairs towards their elimination.
The Armenian Foreign Minister drew the attention of the OSCE PA President on the gross violations of international humanitarian law by Azeri armed forces. The Minister added that “Azerbaijan keeps ignoring the calls of the international community to respect the ceasefire, violating the 1994 and 1995 trilateral agreements on ceasefire.
Ilkka Kanerva noted, in turn, that the use of force is unacceptable and added that the OSCE Parliamentary Assembly fully supports the efforts of the Minsk Group Co-Chairs targeted at the peaceful negotiated settlement of the Karabakh conflict and the expansion of the authority of the team of the Personal Representative of the OSCE Chairman-in-Office.
The interlocutors discussed a number of issues on OSCE agenda.
Moscow calls on Baku and Yerevan to demonstrate restraint and to resume negotiations, Russian Foreign Ministry’s official spokeswoman Maria Zakharova said on Wednesday.
“What is happening now confirms our thesis that it is especially important to demonstrate restraint and move toward restoring stability now,” Zakharova said. “It is necessary to resume the negotiations process for long-term settlement,” she added.
“The priority task now is to calm the situation, to prevent new bloodshed and resume the negotiation process,” she noted.
The Armenian Community of Barcelona held a memorial service for the soldiers and the innocent civilians who were killed during the recent Azerbaijani offensive against Nagorno Karabakh.
Also there was special Prayer Service for the Steadfast Peace in Armenia and Artsakh, the Armenian Cultural Association of Barcelona informs.
As of 12:00 all military actions were ceased along the Nagorno Karabakh line of contact. NKR President’s Spokesperson David Babayan confirmed the news to .
He added that the situation at the frontline is currently calm.
“The military actions of the past days have not changed the military balance in the region,” Babayan said.
Photo:Â Valery Sharifulin/TASS
The first group of Russian planes has left the Hmeimim air base in Syria for their permanent locations, TASS reports, quoting the Russian Defense Ministry.
“The group consists of the leader plane – a Tupolev-154 liner and multi-role Sukhoi-34Â bombers,” the ministry specified.
The Kremlin press service released a statement on Monday evening that the Russian and Syrian presidents, Vladimir Putin and Bashar Assad, agreed to start withdrawing the main part of the Russian aviation task force from Syria because the Russian Aerospace Forces had fulfilled the fundamental tasks assigned to them.
Russia will leave an air flight control center in the Syrian territory that will monitor the observation of the Syrian ceasefire.
NKR Defense Ministry reports rise of tensions at the line of contact between the armed forces of the Nagorno Karabakh Republic and Azerbaijan March 3-4.
The rival fired more than 1,800 shots from weapons of different caliber in the direction of the Armenian positioned in the reported time.
The adversary also used HAN-17 grenades in the eastern direction of the line of contact, the Ministry said.
Front divisions of the NKR Defense Army gave a worthy response to the attacking actions of the rival and continued to confidently perform their military duty.