Yerevan, Moscow reluctance to withdraw Armenian armed groups' from Karabakh undermines peace - Jamestown Foundation

By Trend

Armenia and Russia’s unwillingness or inability to ensure the withdrawal of the Armenian armed groups from Azerbaijan's Karabakh undermines the peace process and jeopardizes regional stability, Trend reports citing the Jamestown Foundation.

This is envisaged by Senior Research Fellow at the Azerbaijani Center for Analysis of International Relations (AIR Center) Vasif Huseynov's article, published in the Jamestown Foundation.

The article noted that on March 26, the Ministry of Defense of Azerbaijan called on the Russian side to complete the withdrawal of illegal Armenian armed detachments from the Azerbaijani territories under the control of Russia’s peacekeeping mission.

Referring to the fourth article of the trilateral (Azerbaijan, Armenia, Russia) agreement that ended the Second Karabakh War, Azerbaijan stated that this was at least the second instance since the war’s end that the Azerbaijani Defense Ministry had publicly appealed to Moscow to ensure the full implementation of the article. This time, however, the appeal occurred against a background of intense political and geopolitical significance, said the article.

According to the author, the security situation in the Azerbaijan-Armenia state, as well as in Azerbaijan’s Karabakh region, has remained strained since the beginning of March, amidst the ongoing military conflict in Ukraine.

"Baku reported increasing numbers of provocations by the Armenian armed detachments while Russia has been distracted by the situation in Ukraine. Azerbaijani media published video evidence of the pullout of part of Russia’s military equipment from the Azerbaijani territories, where Russian peacekeepers are temporarily deployed. It was noted that the withdrawn equipment was allegedly transferred to Ukraine," Huseynov wrote.

The article stated that against this background, the clashes between Armenia and Azerbaijan, which in early March were mostly confined to areas along the interstate border, have now slowly been shifting to the region under the control of the Russian peacekeeping mission.

The situation escalated further in mid-March when Armenia blamed Azerbaijan for an explosion (March 7-8) involving the natural gas pipeline from Armenia to Karabakh, the article stressed.

On March 24, the Armenian side accused Azerbaijan of entering the village of Farrux (Khojaly district), which is inside the zone temporarily under the control of Russia’s peacekeepers. On the evening of March 26, the Russian Ministry of Defense announced violations of the terms of the trilateral statement of November 9, 2020, and an incursion into the zone of responsibility of the Russian peacekeeping contingent, the author emphasized.

The Azerbaijani government harshly rebuked the calls by Moscow and other OSCE Minsk Group co-chairs for the withdrawal of Azerbaijani troops from the village of Farrukh since the area in question is part of the internationally recognized territory of Azerbaijan and the Armenian armed formations remain there in violation of the aforementioned trilateral agreement, the article said.

Vasif Huseynov outlined that the full implementation of November 9, 2020, trilateral accord was the only way to assuredly prevent new escalations in the region. In turn, Armenia’s and Russia’s unwillingness or inability to ensure the withdrawal of the Armenian armed groups from Karabakh undermines the larger peace process and jeopardizes regional stability.