Addressing a meeting of senior members of the de facto ethnic Armenian government of the region, Nagorno-Karabakh’s premier Gurgen Nersisian said that the additional restrictions imposed by Azerbaijan had led to the impossibility of importing even the minimum amount of essential goods, including fuel, into the region since Sunday.
“As a result, we have been unable to deliver even the amount of goods provided for by ration coupons [given to the population] for a designated period. We will extend the validity of coupons so that our people can use them after their expiry,” Nersisian said, without elaborating.
Nagorno-Karabakh’s Information Center, a single information platform for the region’s government bodies, later said that due to efforts of the local administration and the Russian peacekeeping force it became possible to “somewhat restore” the supply of humanitarian cargoes disrupted in recent days.
According to the report, the main part of the cargo imported through the peacekeepers consisted of essential food included in the coupon system, which will be delivered to local stores beginning on Wednesday.
The supply of goods to Nagorno-Karabakh from Armenia has already been reduced dramatically since December when a group of Azerbaijanis calling themselves environmental activists blocked the only road connecting the region with Armenia and passing through the Lachin corridor.
Azerbaijan tightened the effective blockade on April 23 by setting up a roadblock on the Lachin corridor at the border with Armenia.
Commanders of Russian peacekeepers, who are deployed in Nagorno-Karabakh and the Lachin corridor under the terms of the Moscow-brokered 2020 ceasefire agreement, reportedly continued to conduct negotiations with Azerbaijani representatives regarding the checkpoint that Russia describes as unacceptable.
In the past several months Azerbaijan denied blockading the mostly Armenian-populated region, citing the fact that vehicles of Russian peacekeepers as well as representatives of the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) were not prevented from carrying humanitarian supplies to the region and transporting people needing medical care to Armenia.
But Nersisian said earlier today that for three days no transportation was carried out by ICRC vehicles. He added that “additional clarifications” had to be made regarding how urgent transportation of Karabakh residents should be done through the agency of the ICRC and Russian peacekeepers.
When setting up the checkpoint on Sunday Baku pledged that “necessary conditions” would be created for “a transparent and orderly passage of Armenian residents living in the Karabakh region of Azerbaijan” in both directions.
In an interview with RFE/RL’s Armenian Service on Tuesday, Gegham Stepanian, a human rights defender in Nagorno-Karabakh, voiced doubts that any ethnic Armenian resident of the region would agree to be inspected by Azerbaijan services in the Lachin corridor.
Armenia and Nagorno-Karabakh stress that the presence of an Azerbaijani checkpoint in the five-kilometer-wide corridor contradicts the provisions of the Moscow-brokered ceasefire agreement that put an end to a deadly war in 2020 and brought Russian peacekeepers to the region.
The United States and France, which along with Russia have spearheaded decades-long efforts to broker a solution to the protracted conflict over Nagorno-Karabakh, have voiced their concerns about the developments in the Lachin corridor, saying that an Azerbaijani checkpoint there undermines efforts to establish confidence and damages the peace process between Baku and Yerevan.