Nagoric Karabakh. What's happening?

Armenian and Azerbaijani troops entered into a new acute confrontation

The situation on the border of the unrecognized republic Nagorny Karabakh (NKR) and Azerbaijan sharply worsened. The army of Azerbaijan on the night of April 2 went on the attack (according to its assurances, as a response to shelling by the NKR). As a result of full -scale military operations with the use of tanks, artillery and helicopters, at least 12 Azerbaijani troops and 18 Armenian, as well as civilians, including a child, died. The battles as of the evening of April 2 continue, but the promotion of the army of Azerbaijan has been stopped.

What happened on the night of April 2

The Armed Forces of Azerbaijan attacked the positions of the army of Nagorno -Karabakh. Both parties recognize this, but Baku claims that “a counterattack was inflicted after the shelling of Azerbaijani positions by the Army of Armenia from large -caliber machine guns, mortars, grenade launchers and artillery, which led to victims among the civilian population.”

The Ministry of Defense of Azerbaijan indicates that the Armenian shell was in the house of the “forced migrant” by Jalal Ragimov in the village of Garagadzhi Teretersky district ( there is a village, however, also in Karabakh - approx, “Medusa” ) and killed the owner of the house. His son Orhan Ragimov lost both legs. Another shell allegedly fell into the house of the deputy executive representative of Mukhtar Mamedov in the village of Bakharly, the Agdam district (territory of Azerbaijan).

The Armenian side does not report on the shelling that provoked the enemy. According to them, Azerbaijan at 2 o’clock in the morning attacked Nagorny Karabakh in southeastern and north-east directions using artillery, armored vehicles and helicopters.

“At 02.00, the Azerbaijani Army after a massive artillery preparation went on the offensive throughout the front line,” said Albert Andaryan, plenipotentiary representative of the NKR in Moscow. According to him, "for the first time since the ceasefire in May 1994, the enemy used all types of weapons, including aviation, heavy artillery and volley fire systems."

At 8:30 in the morning, the Azerbaijanis struck the direction of the village of Martuni from Grad, the Armenian media reported . As a result of shelling in the chartar, a 12-year-old child Vaginak Grigoryan died, two more children were injured. “Born in 2004, Vardana Andreasyan was diagnosed with multiple hips, traumatic and hemorrhagic shock, an operation was performed, everything is in order. In Gevorg Grigoryan, damage to the soft tissues of the thigh was diagnosed. Surgery was carried out, ”the hospital said .

There are no confirmations of this information from independent sources.

During the offensive, the army of Azerbaijan, according to the local Ministry of Defense, "broke through the front line of defense of the Armenian army, freeing several strategic heights and settlements." Allegedly, they were completely liberated from the enemy of the height around the village of Talysh, as well as the settlement of Seysulan, as well as the height of LELETE.

On the evening of April 2, they say to the Ministry of Defense of Azerbaijan, the indicated heights are strengthened, new trenches are born. The army of Nagorno -Karabakh claims that the Azerbaijanis managed to throw it to their original positions. On the evening of April 2, the battles continued.

Losses of the parties

Both sides suffered serious losses. Azerbaijanis claim that they destroyed 6 Armenian tanks, 15 artillery attitudes, over 100 enemy military personnel were wounded or killed.

April President Serzh Sargsyan in the evening of April 2 confirmed that the Armenian troops had lost 18 people, and another 35 troops were injured.

It is also difficult to evaluate real losses from the Azerbaijani side. The Ministry of Defense of Azerbaijan confirms the death of 12 soldiers, one Mi-24 helicopter was shot down, one tank was blown up by a mine. At the same time, the Nagorno -Karabakh army claims that Azerbaijan lost 2 helicopters, 3 tanks and 2 drones, as well as about 200 military personnel. “Only in the direction of Talysh was destroyed at least 30 soldiers of the Azerbaijani special purpose detachment,” the army’s press service said.

The Armenian media spread photos of the downed drone and the dead Azerbaijani troops. As evidence of the big losses of Azerbaijan in the manpower of the NKR Ministry of Defense, this photo gives.

What preceded the escalations

The situation in the conflict zone, on the so -called line of contact of the two sides, was never called calm. In December 2015, Nagorny Karabakh said that 13 Azerbaijani soldiers were killed in a week, and another 30 were injured. The Ministry of Defense of Azerbaijan in response claimed the murder of 18 and the wound of more than 20 enemy military personnel. There was no confirmation on both sides.

At the beginning of the week, the Azerbaijan Ministry of Defense reported about attempts by the Nagorno -Karabakh army to violate the border, but supposedly it suffered losses and retreated .

In the last days, the Ministry of Defense of Azerbaijan and the military department of Nagorno -Karabakh accused each other of shelling every day. So, according to the “Caucasian Knot”, on April 1, Azerbaijan accused Armenia of 142 shelling per day, on March 31 - 120 shelling, and the Nagorno -Karabakh army stated that on March 31 and April 1, the Azerbaijani military fired at the Karabakh positions more than 2,700 times. They shot at the border and a week ago, the correspondent of Gazeta.ru reported on the front line from the side of Nagorno -Karabakh.

Nagorno -Karabakh, a small territory in Transcaucasia, about the history of which Azerbaijanis and Armenians have the opposite opinion. In 1923, the Nagorno-Karabakh Autonomous Region was formed as part of the Azerbaijan SSR. After the collapse of the Soviet Union, December 10, 1991, a referendum was held here, at which, according to official figures, 99.89% spoke in spoke for independence from Azerbaijan. Baku did not recognize the referendum, after which the war that continued until 1994 began, and the Armenians managed to knock the Azerbaijani army at the cost of large sacrifices and destruction.

Since then, the leaders of Armenia and Azerbaijan actually do not communicate (mainly only with the mediation of third countries), but regularly exchange replicas about Nagorno -Karabakh in absentia. Only in recent days, both the President of Armenia and the head of Azerbaijan spoke about Karabakh - both of them were in the USA. On March 30, Sargsyan, on the day of recognition of Nagorno -Karabakh Armenia, said that "people who use the word" occupation "so often, forget that Karabakh" was a victim of occupation for 70 years in a row. " “What was the annexation of Karabakh to Azerbaijan in 1921 with the light hand of Stalin, if not by occupation? Karabakh did not rebel from a good life. The true cause of the conflict precisely in the original occupation and, therefore, Nagorno -Karabakh has nothing to do with the concept of the territorial integrity of Azerbaijan, ” said Sargsyan.

In turn, Ilham Aliyev was already on April 2 (he, unlike Sargsyan, did not fly home from the United States immediately after the beginning of the shootings) spoke the following at the IV nuclear security summit in Washington: “This occupation has been going on for more than 20 years. The UN Security Council adopted four resolutions requiring the immediate and unconditional withdrawal of the Armed Forces of Armenia from our occupied territories. But these resolutions remain on paper. I repeat, these resolutions require the immediate and unconditional withdrawal of the Armed Forces of Armenia from our territory. ”

International reaction

The international reaction to the resumption of the armed conflict was expected to negative. Russian President Vladimir Putin regret that the situation in the zone of the Karabakh conflict "again rolled up to an armed confrontation," said his spokesman Dmitry Peskov. He added that Putin "calls on the parties to the conflict to the immediate cessation of fire and the manifestation of restraint."

The Russian colleague Sergei Lavrov spoke with the Foreign Minister of the Azerbaijan and Armenia and, as stated in the press release of the Russian department, "called on to influence the situation to stop violence."

The co -chairs of the OSCE Minsk group (Igor Popov from Russia, James Wallik from the USA and Pierre Andre from France) expressed "serious concern in connection with large -scale violations of the ceasefire." “We harshly condemn the use of force and regret in connection with the meaningless death of people, including civilians. Co -chairs urge the parties to cease fire and take all the necessary measures to stabilize the situation. There is no alternative to the peaceful negotiation resolution of the conflict, and the war cannot be a way of resolving the conflict, ”the intermediaries of the OSCE Minsk group emphasized. They must meet to discuss the situation on Monday, April 4, in Vienna.

Most of the officials avoided accusing any of the parties-except that the press secretary of the organization of the collective security agreement (CSTO) Vladimir Zaynetdinov assigned responsibility for the fighting in Baku. “Everything should be decided through negotiations. The actions of the Azerbaijani side in this case lead to an aggravation of the situation and conflict, ”he said .

In Armenia, a number of experts are inclined to suspect of involvement in the aggravation of the conflict of Turkish President Recep Erdogan. The press secretary of the NKR President David Babayan said that "the statements of the Turkish side during the visit of Aliyev to Turkey were Pantyurkist in nature, and statements about the liberation of Karabakh and current actions indicate that Turkey is an interested side." The senior researcher at the Institute of Social and Political Studies of the Black Sea region, Vladimir Novikov, did not rule out in an interview with MK that Azerbaijan could provoke clashes. “Ilham Aliyev cannot keep the manat from the fall, and against this background the ruling clans get out of control. As the classics of Marxism said, the best way out of the crisis is a war, ”he believes.

In September 2015, the American expert agency Stratfor reported that the situation in the region could be inflated because of Russia. “There are more and more signs of cooperation between the Russian Federation and Azerbaijan in order to undermine the status quo. This may be due to the fact that Russia seeks to send peacekeepers to this region in an attempt to establish its control for it, ”they suggested in Statfor.

The Caucasian Knot recalls that Russia continues military cooperation with Armenia and Azerbaijan. In February, Russia issued Armenia a loan of 200 million dollars for the purchase of weapons, and in March the supply of weapons was discussed by Dmitry Rogozin and Ilham Aliyev. In addition, in Armenia there is a Russian military base.