Azerbaijan has taken responsibility for the deaths of several Russian peacekeepers in Nagorno-Karabakh on Wednesday. The servicemen were attacked “when they were returning from an observation post of the Russian peacekeeping contingent in the area of the village of Dzhanyatag,” according to the Russian Defense Ministry. Among the dead was the deputy commander of the Northern Fleet’s submarine forces, but Russia avoided retaliation.
The vehicle in which the peacekeepers were traveling was attacked with small arms. Russia’s Defense Ministry did not say how many people were killed, but RT chief Margarita Simonyan later wrote, without citing sources, that there were five dead. Military correspondent Yuri Kotenok also claims that a total of five people were killed. According to the Moscow Times, there are four.
One of the dead is the deputy commander of the peacekeeping contingent Ivan Kovgan, deputy commander of the submarine forces of the Northern Fleet, SeverPost reported. Several months ago he was sent on a business trip to Karabakh.
Azerbaijan’s Defense Ministry “expressed its deepest condolences” regarding the incident. The Kremlin reported that President Ilham Aliyev apologized in a conversation with Vladimir Putin. Aliyev, according to a message on the Kremlin website, also expressed his willingness to provide financial assistance to the families of the victims. The first suspects for the death of the peacekeepers have already been arrested and their commander has been replaced.
The assumption of blame coincided with the first meeting of Nagorno-Karabakh Armenians and representatives of Azerbaijan, held in the city of Yevlakh. There was no agreement between them. The representative of the President of Azerbaijan for special missions, Elchin Amirbekov, for his part, said that at the meeting a draft peace agreement was handed over to the Armenian side, which provides that both countries will be obliged not to interfere in each other’s affairs. On September 20, the authorities of this unrecognized republic announced that they had reached a ceasefire agreement with the participation of Russian peacekeepers. But it is unknown how the future will be managed.
Although Azerbaijan has pulled the trigger that has cost Russian lives, the orders given by Moscow to spokespersons and media go in the opposite direction: to charge against the government of Armenia, accusing Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan of betraying the interests of Nagorno-Karabakh. under pressure from the United States.
The Russian Foreign Ministry spokesperson, María Zajarova, pointed out “the black ingratitude with which some unscrupulous people have tried to question” the work of the Russian troops deployed in the area, some “blue helmets” who, according to Armenia, have done almost nothing to prevent the attack of Azerbaijani soldiers, who began shelling Nagorno-Karabakh on the afternoon of September 19.
No one “will overshadow his feat, but all this will fall with eternal shame on the slanderers,” he wrote on his Telegram channel on Wednesday after learning of the death of the Russian soldiers. Zakharova dedicated a significant part of her message, written in connection with the death of these peacekeepers, to criticizing the leadership of Armenia, but she said nothing about Azerbaijan’s role in the death of Russian soldiers. .
The Kremlin is recommending that state media blame everything on the Armenian government, a retaliation for its flirtations with the US and the West in general. Kremlin spokesman Dimitri Peskov called the fighting an internal matter for Azerbaijan. More than 200 people have died. Theoretically, Armenia is part of the post-Soviet CSTO defensive alliance, but Putin’s NATO has not served in this case. Armenia, like Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan and Uzbekistan, depends in each case on what is most convenient for the Kremlin.
Russia, which describes the attacks it has suffered on its own soil by Ukraine since the invasion began as “terrorism”, acts with caution in the case of other neighbors. And that it rains in wet: it is not the first time that Russian peacekeepers have died due to the actions of the Azerbaijani army in Nagorno-Karabakh. In November 2020, during the previous escalation, a Mi-24 helicopter accompanying a convoy was shot down over the internationally recognized territory of Armenia. That crash cost the lives of two soldiers. Putin decorated them, without consequences for Baku.
Something similar happened with Turkey, a NATO member, in 2015 after the downing of a Russian plane on the border with Syria. Russia announced a package of economic sanctions against Turkey, which included blocking tomato imports.