President of the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe Pedro Agramunt called on the Nagorno Karabakh conflicting sides to respect the ceasefire and resume negotiations. As reports Agramunt expressed deep concern over the violence and escalation in the Nagorno Karabakh contact line.
“In his speeches, president Ilham Aliyev stressed that Azerbaijan was for peaceful settlement of NK conflict, however, if this conflict wasn’t settled, they’d apply force to liberate our territories from occupation.”
While details of the latest deadly escalation are emerging, it is worth mentioning that satellite imagery available to independent international security analysts has shown that in the last six months the Azeri military have been amassing military hardware and conducting military drills along the Agdam, Fizuli and Djabrayil regions controlled by the Nagorno Karabakh, in the southern and south-eastern parts of the NK. Today’s reports from Azerbaijan and Armenia confirmed that these regions were seeing the heaviest fighting. This implies premeditation on behalf of Azeri forces, contrary to the Azeri official statements claiming that the assault on 2 April was a simple response to the Armenian alleged shootings.
The dangerous aspect to this is that, once begun, any military operations in this conflict zone can easily escalate and get out of control. An unpredictable conflict environment combines with a tough macho political culture where it is seen as a sign of weakness to compromise. And, as the Prussian general Helmuth von Moltke said, “No battle plan ever survives contact with the enemy.”
According to Markedonov, breaking of a fragile status quo in that “hot line” is going to have negative implications for Russia, as first and foremost, it’ll question perspective for Eurasian integration projects, on account of absence of a consensus of member countries in providing military-political support to Armenia, secondly, it’ll sharply contradict interests of Moscow and Baku, up to possibility of repeating “Georgian scenario,” and thirdly, weakening of Russian positions will inevitably raise the issue of “internationalization” of peaceful settlement process, in case of which Russia’s impact will noticeably decrease.
“Turkey also tries to divert the international community, as it yet has problems linked to Syria, the USA and Kurds. This has even been touched upon in Russian press, that Turkey’s special services, through their agents of influence in Azerbaijan, have set an issue of initiating provocations and diverting from them.”
Foreign Ministry of Armenia will jointly work with the Foreign Ministry of Nagorno Karabakh on signing a military cooperation agreement. President Serzh Sargsyan announced this during the National Security Council session. “It is necessary to have the text of the agreement, conduct relevant discussions and send it to the National Assembly”, the President noted.
Due to timely and professional actions of Nagorno Karabakh Defense Army it was possible to take the situation under control and not only take the situation under control, but also inflict considerable losses on the enemy.
Azerbaijani ongoing provocations and military actions subvert the stability of the region and undermine the efforts, taken to resolve the conflict.
The Azerbaijani offensive has created an unprecedented situation. Director of “European Friends of Armena” Eduardo Lorenzo Ochoa stressed in an interview with “Armenpress” that the lack of respect of international law and the basic principle of non-use of force has resulted in the gravest military escalation since the cease-fire was signed.
