Armenia Reports Fresh Shooting Along Azerbaijani Border

Armenia has accused Azerbaijan of another cease-fire violation along the two South Caucasus nations’ restive border.

Military authorities in Yerevan said on November 21 that Azerbaijan’s armed forces fired in the direction of Armenian positions located along the eastern part of the Armenian-Azerbaijani border the previous night.

Armenia’s Defense Ministry reported no casualties on the Armenian side, noting that the situation along the border on the morning of November 21 was “relatively stable.”

Azerbaijan’s Defense Ministry quickly issued a statement calling the Armenian side’s report “disinformation.”

Armenians and Azerbaijanis have increasingly been accusing each other of breaking a fragile cease-fire and escalating the situation along their tense border, as well as in the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict zone.

Yerevan says at least two Armenian soldiers have been seriously wounded in border skirmishes with Azerbaijan over the past two weeks.

Nearly 300 soldiers combined were killed in border clashes between Armenia and Azerbaijan in mid-September in the deadliest fighting since the 2020 war in Nagorno-Karabakh that claimed the lives of close to 7,000 people.

The border violence two months ago was followed by a flurry of diplomatic activity, with Yerevan and Baku engaging in talks hosted by the European Union, the United States, and Russia.

As part of an EU-brokered arrangement between Armenia and Azerbaijan, a civilian monitoring mission of the European Union was deployed along the Armenian-Azerbaijani border from Armenia’s side in October. It had been agreed that the mission of the EU Monitoring Capacity would last two months.

Russia currently deploys about 2,000 peacekeepers in Nagorno-Karabakh after brokering a cease-fire between Armenia and Azerbaijan following their 44-day war over the region in September-November 2020.

Armenia and Azerbaijan have been locked in a conflict over Nagorno-Karabakh for years. Some 30,000 people were killed in a war in the early 1990s that left ethnic Armenians in control of the breakaway region and seven adjacent districts of Azerbaijan proper.

Nagorno-Karabakh is internationally recognized as part of Azerbaijan.

Source: Rferl