Pashinian referred to the public remarks made by the Azerbaijani leader during a visit to the Azeri-controlled Karabakh town of Shushi (Susa) on November 8, a day that Azerbaijan calls Victory Day to mark the end of a 44-day Armenian-Azerbaijani war over Nagorno-Karabakh in 2020.
In his speech to an audience of senior army officers Aliyev, in particular, accused Armenia of not honoring agreements reached as part of the 2020 ceasefire in Nagorno-Karabakh and warned that Azerbaijan would take “the necessary steps” unless Armenia fulfilled its obligations, including the withdrawal of forces from Nagorno-Karabakh and providing Azerbaijan with a land corridor to its western exclave of Nakhichevan.
Official Yerevan has rejected the demands, in its turn accusing Azerbaijan of failing to live up to its commitments under the Russia-brokered ceasefire.
At a weekly cabinet session last week Pashinian accused Aliyev of “preparing the ground” for a genocide against the Armenian population of Nagorno-Karabakh.
In his first Twitter post on Monday Pashinian commented on the reported shooting by Azerbaijani forces at ethnic Armenian farmers working in the field in the east of Nagorno-Karabakh, thus questioning Azerbaijan’s narrative on Karabakh Armenians being “our citizens.”
Later that day Pashinian posted another tweet referring to Aliyev’s November 8 statements concerning Armenian towns.
“Dressed in a military uniform and in a military audience Azerbaijan’s President Aliyev in his threatening and aggressive speech of November 8 announced that Sisian, Goris, Kapan and other Armenian towns are in the field of their view. And Armenia understands what it means. It is a blatant act of terrorizing the civilian population,” the Armenian leader charged.
Meanwhile, the Armenian premier’s ambassador-at-large Edmon Marukian wrote on Twitter that “Azerbaijan must stop terrorizing Armenia and Nagorno-Karabakh in order to reach long-lasting peace in the region.”
“Otherwise, it is impossible to come to consent with someone who holds a gun to your head and does not respect any agreements,” he added.
Reacting to Pashinian’s earlier statements Azerbaijan’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs said on Friday that they were “an attempt to deliberately escalate tensions in the region.”
Pashinian’s latest post on Twitter came amid a report by Armenia’s Defense Ministry about another ceasefire violation by Azerbaijan along the border with Armenia.
It said that Azerbaijani armed forces opened fire at Armenian positions in the eastern part of the border at around 8:00 pm on Monday. No casualties were reported. The ministry said the situation was stable as of 10:00 pm.
Armenia and Azerbaijan have traded accusations about ceasefire violations along their tense border for weeks after the latest deadly border clashes in mid-September, the most serious fighting since the 2020 war in Nagorno-Karabakh.
Armenia said one of its soldiers was heavily wounded by an “enemy shot” on November 10. Azerbaijan denied firing at the positions where the Armenian soldier was wounded that day.
Armenia and Azerbaijan have been locked in a conflict over the mainly Armenian-populated Nagorno-Karabakh region for years. Some 30,000 people were killed in a war in the early 1990s that left ethnic Armenians in control of the former autonomous oblast inside Soviet Azerbaijan as well as several adjacent districts of Azerbaijan proper.
The two sides fought another war in 2020 that lasted six weeks and killed thousands of people on both sides before a Russia-brokered cease-fire, resulting in Armenians losing control over parts of the region and seven adjacent districts.
Under the ceasefire Moscow deployed about 2,000 troops to the region to serve as peacekeepers.