At least four Armenian soldiers have been killed and one wounded in an exchange of fire with Azerbaijani forces on the common border.
This is the most serious incident between both Caucasian countries since the reconquest of Nagorno-Karabakh - an enclave with an Armenian majority in Azerbaijani territory - by Azerbaijan in September and, in December, both countries committed to negotiating in search of signing a peace agreement that puts an end to more than three decades of conflict between these two former Soviet states.
The Armenian Ministry of Defense has reported on its website that the fighting began at 5:30 local time (2:30 in mainland Spain) when “units of the Azerbaijani Armed Forces opened fire with light weapons” against Armenian positions in the outskirts of the town of Nerkin Hand, at the southern end of the border that separates both countries.
The same institution later added that the fighting had stopped four hours later.
For its part, the Azerbaijani State Border Service (DSX) has stated that the attack was a “revenge operation” in response to Armenian “provocations”, the public news agency AZERTAC has reported.
According to this version, the Armenian forces stationed near Nerkin Hand opened fire on Monday night against the Azerbaijani positions, so, hours later, the Azerbaijani military responded by “destroying the Armenian positions.”
“There are serious losses among the personnel of the destroyed combat post,” the official agency has assured.
Arman Tatoyan, former ombudsman in Armenia, has published on occupied 215 square kilometers of territory internationally recognized as Armenia after various clashes along the border in the last three years.
Since the end of 2022, the European Union has maintained a border monitoring mission aimed at avoiding these clashes and deployed at the request of the Yerevan Government, despite the opposition of Azerbaijan and Russia.
Moscow has a military base with about 2,000 soldiers near the Armenian city of Gyumri and both countries are part of a mutual defense pact, but Nikol Pashinian's government complains that Vladimir Putin has abandoned his Caucasian partner in the face of Azerbaijan's attacks.
In 2020, the Baku government began a military offensive against Azerbaijani provinces controlled by the Armenians of Nagorno-Karabakh and, de facto, by the neighboring Republic of Armenia, since the war of the early 1990s that followed the independence of both states of the Soviet Union.
After that war, which left more than 7,000 dead in six weeks, only a fraction of the territory of Nagorno Karabakh remained in Armenian hands and under Russian supervision, but, in September of last year, after nine months of an intense blockade, Azerbaijan launched their final offensive to regain control of the territory, causing the flight of 100,000 local Armenians.
Despite the hard blow that the loss of Nagorno Karabakh dealt to the Armenian psyche, the Pashinián Government has committed to negotiating with Baku to reach a definitive peace agreement, aware of the military inferiority of its country compared to Azerbaijan, rich in hydrocarbons. , and its ally Turkey, among the 20 richest economies in the world.
Both countries keep their borders with Armenia closed, blocking the Caucasian country to the east and west.
Already last year, Pashinyan publicly recognized Azerbaijan's sovereignty over Karabakh and, this January, proposed amending the Armenian Constitution to eliminate references to Nagorno-Karabakh from the preamble.
But the position of the Armenian leader is fragile, accused by the opposition and former allies of offering one concession after another to an Azerbaijan grown by his victories.
In fact, part of the population fears a new conflict as a result of the irredentist speeches of the Azerbaijani authorities, who demand the opening of a corridor through the south of the neighboring country (the area where the fighting took place this Tuesday) and They have come to claim territories of Armenia that, before the Russian Revolution, were populated mainly by Azeris.
On the other hand, on the other side of the border, the president, Ilham Aliyev, has no problem with the opposition after having revalidated his position as president for another seven years, which he inherited upon the death of his father in 2003. In the elections, held on February 7, Aliyev obtained 92% of the votes, amid criticism from the Council of Europe and electoral observers for the lack of democratic controls and the campaign of repression against the opposition media and activists that preceded the vote.
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