On July 13, from 20:27 to 20:53, there was a shooting from small arms between the units of the armed forces of Azerbaijan and Armenia in the area north-west of Shusha city, reads the information bulletin of the Ministry of Defense of the Russian Federation on the activities of the Russian peacekeeping contingent in the zone of the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict (as of July 14, 2021), published on the ministry's website.
First of all, the inconsistency of the wording in the text in the text of the Russian defense ministry and the statement of the Ministry of Defense of Azerbaijan dated July 15, 2021 is striking.
It says that the shooting came from illegal Armenian armed groups located on the territory of Azerbaijan, where Russian peacekeepers are temporarily stationed. First, the question arises why the Russian Ministry of Defense characterizes the Armenian military who are in their area of responsibility on the territory of Azerbaijan as the Armed Forces of Armenia? But the main thing is why armed people are there in general on the sovereign territory of Azerbaijan, which is temporarily under the control of the Russian peacekeeping contingent?
This question is surprising, since the withdrawal of all Armenian armed forces is a prerequisite for the trilateral statement of the President of the Republic of Azerbaijan, the Prime Minister of the Republic of Armenia and the President of the Russian Federation on Karabakh dated November 10.
This is written in black and white in paragraph 4 of the document.
- The peacemaking forces of the Russian Federation shall be deployed concurrently with the withdrawal of the Armenian troops. The peacemaking forces of the Russian Federation will be deployed for five years, a term to be automatically extended for subsequent five-year terms unless either Party notifies about its intention to terminate this clause six months before the expiration of the current term.
Already on November 11, reports began to appear about the arrival of Russian peacekeeping forces in Karabakh, the Russian Defense Ministry published a map of their deployment as of that day.
On November 10, the Il-76 and An-124 military transport aircraft made 140 flights. In the city of Khankendi, the headquarters of the Russian peacekeeping forces has been deployed in Nagorno-Karabakh.
Russian Defense Ministry spokesman Igor Konashenkov said that all 18 permanent observation posts of the Russian peacekeepers are deployed in Nagorno-Karabakh. Nine points are located in the southern zone of responsibility and the same number are in the northern one.
He also clarified that 7 temporary observation posts, which ensure the passage of Russian peacekeepers, are in the Lachin corridor: this is the road through the village of Zabukh, the state farm Lisogorski and the village of Zarisli.
According to the logic of things, not a single serviceman of the Armed Forces of Armenia should have remained in Karabakh by this time. However, they not only stayed there, they received reinforcements from Armenia several times.
On February 27, the Azerbaijani Foreign Ministry demanded that Yerevan stop the deployment of its Armed Forces on the territory of Azerbaijan. The statement notes that Armenian servicemen are secretly deployed through the Lachin corridor to the Karabakh region of Azerbaijan.
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Earlier, on January 8, a letter from Azerbaijani Foreign Minister Jeyhun Bayramov to UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres was circulated as a document of the UN General Assembly and Security Council.
In particular, it notes that as a result of anti-terrorist operations carried out by the relevant structures of Azerbaijan, 62 members of the sabotage group, who are citizens of Armenia, were detained. The details of their detention in the Khojavend region are reported in a joint statement by the Ministry of Defense and the State Security Service of Azerbaijan on December 13. As a result of sabotage, four people were killed, three were injured: two servicemen and one civilian. “The State Security Service of Azerbaijan had to conduct an anti-terrorist operation,” the publication explains.
This is not the only case of when the Armenian military enter into the territory of Azerbaijan through the Lachin corridor, which is under the control of the Russian peacekeeping forces. On July 6, 2021, at about 17:50, illegal armed formations of Armenia on the territory of Azerbaijan, where Russian peacekeepers are temporarily deployed, fired at units of the Azerbaijani army located in the direction of the Aliagali village of the Agdam region. According to the Azerbaijani Defense Ministry, senior warrant officer Sakit Dadashev was wounded as a result.
During the recent trial in Baku on the case of Armenian servicemen detained in December last year in the Khojavend region of Azerbaijan, the defendants testified that they were taken to the place of deployment under cover of night, armed in vehicles, without warning that it was outside Armenia, and the Russian peacekeepers at the checkpoints did not prevent this.
Not so long ago, Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev talked about the neglect of duties on the part of the Russian military guarding the Lachin corridor. On February 27, during a press conference in video format, the head of state stated that the Russian military were violating the provisions of the agreement on Karabakh: “Therefore, when Russian peacekeepers incomprehensibly allow for a secret passage of foreigners to Nagorno-Karabakh, we are puzzled. We have agreed with the Russian side that foreigners can go there only with our permission. But this agreement is being violated. I won’t say more than that for now. I may have to comment on this topic again, but this is a fact.”
However, the responsibilities of the Russian peacekeeping forces include not only preventing the penetration of Armenian military personnel into the territory of Karabakh, but also ensuring the withdrawal of the Armenian military who remained there. Nevertheless, this commitment of Moscow is not being fulfilled, either. This is evidenced by numerous videos, both by ordinary users and by the so-called official structures of the unrecognized republic.
Moreover, on November 16, Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan announced that the “Artsakh Defense Army” (consisting mainly of military conscripts and Armenian contractors – ed.) will continue to exist.
Returning to the beginning of our conversation, in the information bulletin of the Ministry of Defense of the Russian Federation, questions are raised not only by the wording “Armed Forces of Armenia” in relation to illegal Armenian armed formations on the territory of Azerbaijan, but also the names of settlements. In particular, Khankendi is mentioned in the text as Stepanakert, and Khojavend region as Martuni. The same picture is observed on the maps of the deployment of Russian peacekeeping forces, which are regularly published on the ministry's website. However, unlike the maps, on which many names have been preserved since the times of the USSR, it would not be difficult to replace them with the officially accepted ones in the texts of the official department of Russia, which recognizes the sovereignty and territorial integrity of Azerbaijan.
It is noteworthy that at the household level, among the Russian military in Karabakh, there is a sympathetic, if not biased attitude towards the Armenian residents of the region, which clearly contradicts the very philosophy of peacekeeping, which requires its participants to have an equal attitude towards the warring parties, and therefore testifies to their bias. Such videos are quite common on social media resources.
It is rather difficult to assume that the Russian generals openly demonstrate tendentiousness towards the parties to the conflict against the will of the Kremlin.
