Armenia is refusing to take part in the trilateral meeting with Azerbaijan and Russia in Moscow on Friday, the Russian Foreign Ministry announced Thursday amid renewed tension in the South Caucasus.
Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov informed his Azerbaijani counterpart Jeyhun Bayramov “with regret” that Yerevan has pulled out of a meeting between the foreign ministers of the three countries Moscow is set to host tomorrow about the draft of a peace treaty between Yerevan and Baku, the Russian ministry said in a statement.
Lavrov and Bayramov held a phone call about the blockade on the Lachin corridor and the subsequently rising tensions in the region that is currently under the responsibility of a Russian peacekeeping contingent over a dispute about the operation of local mineral resources.
Lavrov called for “strict adherence” to the trilateral meetings between the three countries for the facilitation of unimpeded access to the Lachin Corridor, the only artery connecting Armenia to the disputed region of Karabakh.
The two diplomats underlined the significance of implementing the declarations adopted by Russian, Azerbaijani and Armenian leaders in 2020, 2021 and 2022, as well as the ongoing activities of Russian peacekeepers in the region, the ministry said.
Former Soviet republics Azerbaijan and Armenia, already involved in a decadeslong conflict over Karabakh, which consists of their shared border, have come close to blows this week as they quarrel over several issues concerning the territory.
Baku and Yerevan fought two wars over it in the 1990s and again in the autumn of 2020, until which the territory was illegally occupied by Armenia despite being internationally recognized as part of Azerbaijan. Six weeks of particularly intense clashes saw over 6,500 lives lost in September 2020 before a Russia-brokered truce ended the hostilities. A deal was struck right after, forcing Armenia to cede swatches of territory, and Russia stationed a force of 2,000 peacekeepers in the region to oversee the fragile truce.
Most recently, demonstrations, now well into their second week, near a Russian peacekeeping post on the Lachin road where Azerbaijani activists are protesting the illegal exploitation of mineral resources and its environmental impact on the surrounding area have once again sent tensions flying high between the rival nations.
Armenia called for a U.N. Security Council meeting on Wednesday where its U.N. envoy Mher Margaryan accused Azerbaijan of imposing a “blockade on Armenian residents and resulting humanitarian catastrophe" with the protest on the said artery.
In response, Azerbaijan's U.N. Ambassador Yashar Aliyev rejected all claims by Armenia as false, accusing Yerevan of “misusing'' the corridor for the ''illicit trafficking'' of minerals and other resources as well as military activities.
A statement from Baku reiterated that neither Azerbaijan nor the protesting activists in the area have blocked the corridor, once again pointing the finger at the Russian contingent.
Similarly, Armenian President Nikol Pashinian too blamed the Russian peacekeeping force for “failing to prevent” the blockade on the key corridor.
"The main point of the Russian peacekeepers' presence (in Karabakh) is to prevent illegal actions and control the Lachin corridor,” he said.
Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov on Thursday responded that "Russian peacekeepers are doing everything possible to ensure order and calm in the territories where they are deployed."
For the past week, Azerbaijan has repeated its call to the international community to “persuade Armenia to reciprocate the offer of Azerbaijan, cease its political and military provocations, abandon its aggressive rhetoric and actions, and engage in good faith in direct negotiations to find a peaceful diplomatic solution to all issues pertaining to interstate relations between Azerbaijan and Armenia.”
