Fresh clashes erupted on Friday (May 12th) on the border between Armenia and Azerbaijan for the second day in a row, a flare-up of tensions that threatens talks scheduled for this weekend between the leaders of these Caucasus countries.
This Friday morning, "the Azerbaijani armed forces violated the ceasefire in the direction of Sotk (an Armenian border locality, editor's note) by using drones," the Armenian Ministry of Defense said in a statement. "Two soldiers of the Armenian armed forces were wounded" and one of them is in critical condition, he added.
An Azerbaijani soldier was killed on Thursday and four Armenian soldiers wounded in clashes on the Armenian-Azerbaijani border, 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.
'Undermining talks'
Nikol Pashinyan accused Azerbaijan on Thursday (May 11th) of seeking to "undermine the talks" planned in Brussels, saying that there was "very little" chance of signing a peace agreement with Ilham Aliyev during this meeting. The draft agreement "is still at a very preliminary stage and it is too early to talk about a possible signature," he said. The meeting follows intensive four-day discussions in early May in Washington between Armenian and Azerbaijani delegations, under the auspices of the United States.
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.