Nagorno-Karabakh: a new truce without effect

Early this Sunday morning, Baku and Yerevan were already accusing each other of having violated the ceasefire that entered into force on October 18 at midnight local time.

As was the case a week earlier, after the first truce concluded in Moscow under pressure from Russian President Vladimir Putin.

A first humanitarian ceasefire that was never respected, preventing the Red Cross from undertaking its mission of recovering the bodies of combatants abandoned on the “line of contact” and exchanging prisoners of war.

To read also:

It took several days for diplomats from the Minsk group, co-chaired by France, Russia and the United States, to get Azerbaijan and Armenia to agree to endorse the text, based on the Moscow accords on Saturday. previous.

A text obtained in the snatch, "

a Western diplomat.

On the French side, a delegation visited Yerevan and Baku in the middle of the week, made up of Isabelle Dumont, the diplomatic unit of the Élysée, Frédéric Mondoloni, director of Continental Europe at the Quai d'Orsay, and by Stéphane Visconti, Ambassador Co-President of the Minsk Group.

Russia went to great lengths to obtain this text.

An hour and a half before the announcement of this second truce, the head of Russian diplomacy, Sergei Lavrov, was still on the phone with his Azerbaijani and Armenian counterparts.

Despite these efforts and the weight of Moscow, which has several levers to influence the decisions of Yerevan and Baku, pessimism reigns in the South Caucasus as to the chances of success of this new truce.

Azerbaijan, which believes that it is only by putting military pressure on Nagorno-Karabakh that it will be able to force Yerevan to negotiate on the future of its province lost in 1994, believes more than ever in its ability to achieve the objectives he had set himself by launching the offensive on September 27.

Over the past week, Azerbaijani forces have made some breakthroughs south and north of the "line of contact", retaking a handful of strategic positions.

This Sunday afternoon, the President of Azerbaijan, Ilham Aliev announced again on his twitter account that his troops had just "

, near the Iranian border.

The Armenian forces of the de facto independent republic of Nagorno-Karabakh and Armenia barely resist the sophisticated weaponry available to the enemy, including hundreds of "suicide bombers" drones, and the technological and military support. advisers that Turkey brings him, according to numerous Western military sources.

"

," notes Richard Giragossian, a political and military expert based in Yerevan.