Azerbaijan announced on Sunday that it had installed a first checkpoint at the entrance to the Lachin corridor, the only road linking Armenia to the disputed region of Nagorno-Karabakh. “As of 12:00 (08:00 GMT) on April 23, a border post was set up […] on the sovereign territory of Azerbaijan, at the entrance to the Lachin-Khankendi road,” the guards said. -Azerbaijani borders in a statement, saying it acted “in response” to a similar decision made by Yerevan on Saturday.
Such a measure, a first since the short war between Azerbaijan and Armenia in 2020, was also put in place “to prevent the illegal transport of labour, weapons and mines from the territory of Armenia for illegal formations of Armenian bandits on the territory of Azerbaijan,” they said.
“On April 22, Ministry of Defense surveillance cameras recorded the entry into Azerbaijani territory of two containers for military purposes and a convoy of Armenian military vehicles, contrary to the Trilateral Declaration and the Norms and Principles international law,” supported Azerbaijani diplomacy in a statement, denouncing “threats and provocations” from Yerevan. The Azerbaijani Foreign Ministry argued that the installation of a checkpoint “will serve for transparency on the movements […], the rule of law, and thus, to ensure the safety and security of the movements”. According to the Azerbaijani border guards, the Russian peacekeeping force, deployed in the region, and “the Russian-Turkish monitoring center” were “informed” of such a decision.
Armenia and Azerbaijan, two former Soviet republics in the Caucasus, clashed in a short war in 2020 for control of the Nagorno-Karabakh enclave. This conflict resulted in an Armenian military rout and a Russian-sponsored ceasefire agreement. Deadly clashes in Nagorno-Karabakh or on the border between the two countries, however, continue to break out periodically.
Armenia has also been warning for several months of a “humanitarian crisis” in Karabakh due to an Azerbaijani blockade in the Lachin Corridor area which has caused shortages of medicine and food and power cuts. .
Mountainous region mainly populated by Armenians and having seceded from Azerbaijan at the collapse of the Soviet Union, Nagorno-Karabakh continues to poison relations between Yerevan and Baku. The first conflict, in the early 1990s at the time of the dismantling of the USSR, which left 30,000 dead, ended in an Armenian victory with the support of Moscow. But Azerbaijan took its revenge in the fall of 2020 in a second war, which left 6,500 dead and allowed it to retake many territories.
