Days before EU-hosted negotiations to resolve their 30-year-old territorial dispute, Armenia and Azerbaijan have accused one other for firing along their tense border. An accord to settle a decades-long dispute over Nagorno-Karabakh, a region designated as part of Azerbaijan but populated primarily by Armenians, has been under negotiation between the two nations since last Thursday, when hostilities broke out. According to a statement released by Armenia’s defense ministry on Thursday, “Azerbaijani forces are shooting artillery and mortars at Armenian position in the Sotk region” in the east, where four Armenian soldiers have been injured.
The Azerbaijani Ministry of Defense said that “large-calibre weapons” were used by the Armenian side to break the ceasefire agreement. An Azerbaijani soldier was killed “after a provocation from the Armenian forces,” according to a statement released by the country’s defense ministry.
Future discussions
This occurs days before European Council President Charles Michel is scheduled to welcome Nikol Pashinyan of Armenia and Ilham Aliyev of Azerbaijan in Brussels for discussions on Saturday. According to the European Union, the two presidents also agreed to meet with the heads of France and Germany on June 1, on the margins of a European summit in Moldova. The EU-hosted conference follows foreign minister discussions in Washington, DC last week, where the US declared “tangible progress” had been achieved towards resolving the conflict over the Nagorno-Karabakh territory.
When the Soviet Union disintegrated in 1991, two former Soviet republics, Armenia and Azerbaijan, declared their independence. Two wars have broken out between them because of territorial disputes; the most contentious of them is Nagorno-Karabakh, an Armenian majority area within Azerbaijan. Two conflicts, one lasting six years and ending in 1994, and the other in 2020, ending in a ceasefire pact arranged by Russia, have claimed the lives of tens of thousands of people in the region. However, fights have erupted often ever since. As a significant regional power tries to mediate a peaceful resolution to the crisis, the West steps in. As a result of the aftermath from its conflict in Ukraine, Russia has found it difficult to sustain its decisive influence.
