Armenia’s Ministry of Defense said on Wednesday that units of Azerbaijani armed forces fired in the direction of Armenian positions located along the eastern part of the border from 10:00 p.m. to 22:35 p.m. on November 22.
“The Armenian side suffered no casualties. As of 10:00 a.m. today, the situation at the frontline is relatively stable,” it said in a statement.
Azerbaijan’s Ministry of Defense, for its part, said that Armenian armed forces fired at Azerbaijani military positions located along the western border of the country from 22:15 p.m. on November 22 to 01:15 a.m. on November 23. It did not report casualties either, saying that Azerbaijani forces took retaliatory action.
Azerbaijan’s military also accused ethnic Armenian forces in Nagorno-Karabakh of violating the ceasefire by firing at the positions of the Azerbaijani army stationed in the direction of the town of Susa (Shushi) in the south and the Tartar district situated to the northeast of the region.
De facto military authorities in Stepanakert have called Azerbaijan’s recent reports on skirmishes “disinformation,” for their part accusing Baku of targeting both ethnic Armenian Defense Army positions as well as Karabakh Armenian civilians engaged in agricultural work.
The fresh exchange of accusations between Armenians and Azerbaijanis comes amid a summit of the Collective Security Treaty Organization (CSTO) being held in Armenia on November 23. The gathering of the leaders of six former Soviet nations, including Russia, Armenia, Belarus, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan, is expected, among other things, to discuss Armenia’s request for assistance in its current standoff with Azerbaijan.
The Moscow-led sent observers to Armenia to assess the situation along the Armenian-Azerbaijani border after the latest spasm of violence in September. But it effectively refused to grant Yerevan’s request for military assistance or a political statement denouncing what Armenia calls aggression by Azerbaijan and its occupation of parts of sovereign Armenian territory.
The kind of attitude publicly expressed by Belarus leader Alexander Lukashenko last month sparked criticism of the CSTO in Armenia, with more politicians questioning the rationale of the country’s continued membership in the organization.
Nearly 300 soldiers were killed on both sides in border clashes between Armenia and Azerbaijan on September 13-14, which proved to be the deadliest fighting since the 2020 war in Nagorno-Karabakh that claimed the lives of close to 7,000 people.
The escalation two months ago was followed by a flurry of diplomatic activity, with Yerevan and Baku engaging in talks hosted by the European Union, the United States and Russia.
As part of an EU-brokered arrangement between Armenia and Azerbaijan a civilian monitoring mission of the European Union was deployed along the Armenian-Azerbaijani border from Armenia’s side in October. It had been agreed that the mission of the EU Monitoring Capacity would last two months.
Russia currently deploys about 2,000 peacekeepers in Nagorno-Karabakh after brokering a ceasefire between Armenia and Azerbaijan following their 44-day war over the region in September-November 2020.