Armenia’s Defense Ministry said on Monday that the statement of Azerbaijan’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs to that account did not correspond to the facts.
“To another false message in the statement of the Azerbaijani Ministry of Foreign Affairs, the Defense Ministry of the Republic of Armenia states once again that the Republic of Armenia has no army in Nagorno-Karabakh,” it added.
Official Baku stated, in particular, that “armed forces of Armenia illegally stationed on the territory of Azerbaijan have intensified military engineering works and other military activities in recent weeks”, and “in recent days, a large amount of weapons, military equipment and personnel of the armed forces of Armenia have been accumulating along the un-demarcated border with Azerbaijan.”
At the same time, Azerbaijan’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs claimed that “Armenia has not stopped its territorial claims against Azerbaijan and its verbal recognition of the territorial integrity of Azerbaijan differs from its actions.”
“Azerbaijan reserves the right to defend its sovereignty and territorial integrity,” the ministry underscored.
Meanwhile, the Armenian Ministry of Foreign Affairs also described the Azerbaijani statement as disinformation. “The spread of such false information indicates Azerbaijan’s intention to escalate the situation in the region,” it charged in a statement.
The kind of rhetoric from official Baku comes amid reports of sporadic cross-border shootings that Armenia and Azerbaijan blame on each other. Azerbaijan and ethnic Armenian authorities in Nagorno-Karabakh have also traded accusations regarding violations of the ceasefire regime in recent days.
Armenia and Azerbaijan have been locked in a conflict over Nagorno-Karabakh for decades. Some 30,000 people were killed in a war in the early 1990s that left ethnic Armenians in control of the predominantly Armenian-populated region and seven adjacent districts of Azerbaijan proper.
Decades of internationally mediated talks failed to result in a diplomatic solution and the simmering conflict led to another war in 2020 in which nearly 7,000 soldiers were killed on both sides.
The 44-day war in which Azerbaijan regained all of the Armenian-controlled areas outside of Nagorno-Karabakh as well as chunks of territory inside the Soviet-era autonomous oblast proper ended with a Russia-brokered ceasefire under which Moscow deployed about 2,000 troops to the region to serve as peacekeepers.
Despite the ceasefire and publicly stated willingness of the leaders of both Armenia and Azerbaijan to work towards a negotiated peace, tensions between the two South Caucasus nations escalated in June after Azerbaijan tightened its blockade at a checkpoint installed in April on the road known as the Lachin Corridor, the only link between Armenia and Nagorno-Karabakh.
Yerevan and Stepanakert view the Azerbaijani roadblock as a violation of the terms of the ceasefire agreement that they insist places the vital route solely under the control of Russian peacekeepers.
Amid severe shortages of basic foodstuffs, medical and fuel supplies experienced by Nagorno-Karabakh’s Armenians, Armenia last Friday officially asked the United Nations Security Council to hold an emergency meeting regarding the deterioration of the humanitarian situation in Nagorno-Karabakh.
The move came after the region’s ethnic Armenian leader appealed to the international community for “immediate action” to lift the de facto blockade imposed by Azerbaijan and prevent what he called “the genocide of the people of Nagorno-Karabakh.”
Azerbaijan denies blockading Nagorno-Karabakh and offers an alternative route for supplies via the town of Agdam, which is situated east of the region and is controlled by Baku.
However, Nagorno-Karabakh’s authorities have rejected that offer amid concerns in Stepanakert that the opening of the Agdam road could be a prelude to the region’s absorption by Azerbaijan.