The remote village, Nerkin Hand, is located in Armenia’s southeastern Syunik province bordering Azerbaijan and Iran. It is half-surrounded by Azerbaijani army posts.
Armen Grigorian, the secretary of Armenia’s Security Council, blamed the Russians for the deadly incident there as he defended on Wednesday the European Union’s monitoring mission along the Armenian-Azerbaijan regularly criticized by Moscow.
“The EU monitoring mission has no access [to the border village] and only Russia does,” he told journalists. “Russia is present there and it failed to prevent the incident.”
Narek Ghahramanian, a Syunik-based parliamentarian representing Armenia’s ruling Civil Contract party, insisted, however, that “there is no Russian presence in the village or in the positions” around it held by Armenian forces. He said Russian troops only have a checkpoint on a road leading to Nerkin Hand.
“Honestly, they are not present in our positions and could not have prevented or failed to prevent [the cross-border Azerbaijani fire,]” Ghahramanian told RFE/RL’s Armenian Service.
The head of the EU mission, Markus Ritter, said on Wednesday that the Russian side has not allowed his monitors to visit Nerkin Hand and patrol that section of the border. Grigorian echoed the claim, saying that the Armenian authorities “will try to address the problem.”
Ghahramanian said in this regard that while he has heard complaints about the Russian checkpoint he personally has never encountered any problems during his visits to Nerkin Hand.
“I have gone there, guests from Yerevan have gone there, and villagers enter and leave [the village.] They [the Russians] don’t check anyone,” he said.
At the same time, the lawmaker questioned the effectiveness of Russian military presence in Syunik, saying that Russian soldiers and border guards have not used force to prevent or stop Azerbaijani truce violations.
“What’s the point of their staying there if [the Azerbaijanis] are going to continue to shoot?” said the lawmaker.
Russia deployed troops to Syunik during and shortly after the 2020 war in Nagorno-Karabakh to help the Armenian military defend the strategic region against possible Azerbaijani attacks. Russian-Armenian relations have significantly deteriorated since then, with Yerevan accusing Moscow of not honoring its security commitments to Armenia.