In a report on Monday it said that late on August 22 senior lieutenant Artur Davidian left the area of his permanent deployment without the permission of the higher command, after which some time later contact with him was lost.
According to the preliminary information reported by the Armenian side, Davidian may have lost his way in conditions of poor visibility and ended up on the Azerbaijani side.
The press release of the ministry did not indicate the specific location where the incident occurred.
“Search and rescue operations were immediately launched; with the mediation of the Russian side steps are being taken to confirm the presence of the serviceman on the Azerbaijani side,” the ministry said.
Azerbaijan did not immediately confirm the report about an Armenian serviceman appearing in the territory controlled by its military.
Two Armenian soldiers on duty went missing near the border with Azerbaijan on July 14. The Armenian side then also suggested that they may have strayed into Azerbaijani-controlled territory, launching search and rescue operations and trying to verify the information. The fate of Artur Nalbandian and Aramayis Torozian still remains unclear.
The situation along the Armenian-Azerbaijani border has been tense in recent months, with both sides blaming each other for sporadic skirmishes in which at least one Azerbaijani and five Armenian soldiers have been killed since late July.
Long-running tensions between Armenia and Azerbaijan over the Nagorno-Karabakh region last fall turned into a large-scale war in which nearly 7,000 people were killed in six weeks of fighting that ended in a Moscow-brokered cease-fire deal.
Under the accord, a chunk of Nagorno-Karabakh and all seven districts around it were placed under Azerbaijani administration.
The agreement also resulted in the deployment of around 2,000 Russian peacekeepers in Nagorno-Karabakh and along the Lachin corridor linking the Armenian-populated region with Armenia.