An Armenian soldier was killed by Azerbaijani forces on Friday (May 12th), Yerevan announced, during clashes on the border between Armenia and Azerbaijan for the second day in a row, a flare-up of tension that threatens talks scheduled for this weekend between the leaders of these Caucasus countries. Armenia's Defense Ministry said one of its soldiers was killed and two others wounded, noting that "the intensity of the fighting has decreased."
In the afternoon, the ministry claimed that Azerbaijani forces had "fired heavy weapons at Armenian positions near the village of Kut" in the border region of Gegharkunik. Earlier in the day, the Armenian ministry had claimed that the Azerbaijani army had "violated the ceasefire towards Sotk (an Armenian locality near the border, editor's note) by using drones". "Two soldiers of the Armenian armed forces were wounded" and one of them is in critical condition, he added. For its part, the Azerbaijani Defense Ministry accused Armenian forces of "opening fire with mortars (...) against Azerbaijani positions" on the border between the two countries.
'Very few' chances of signing a peace deal
On Thursday, an Azerbaijani soldier was killed and four Armenian soldiers wounded in other clashes on the border between the two countries, which have disputed the Nagorno-Karabakh region for three decades. The clashes come as Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan and Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev are due to meet in Brussels on Sunday for talks sponsored by the European Union. Pashinyan on Thursday accused Azerbaijan of seeking to "undermine" the talks, saying there was "very little" chance of signing a peace agreement with Aliyev during the meeting.
The two former Soviet republics of the Caucasus clashed in two wars in the early 1990s and in 2020 for control of Nagorno-Karabakh, a mountainous region mostly populated by Armenians that seceded from Azerbaijan more than three decades ago. At the end of the short war that saw Azerbaijan retake territory in this separatist region in autumn 2020, Baku and Yerevan concluded a ceasefire promoted by Russia. Since then, Russian peacekeepers have been deployed in Nagorno-Karabakh, but Armenia has been complaining for several months about their ineffectiveness.