Azerbaijan Launches New Offensive Into Breakaway Region
Azerbaijan’s military launched an offensive into territory controlled by an ethnic Armenian breakaway government in its Nagorno-Karabakh region on Tuesday.
In a statement announcing the offensive, Baku claimed that the offensive was “local anti-terrorist activities” intended to “disarm and secure the withdrawal” of Armenian military units present on Azerbaijani territory. According to the statement, the ultimate goal of the offensive is to “restore the constitutional order of the Republic of Azerbaijan”, a reference to the internationally unrecognized Republic of Artsakh that controlled much of Nagorno-Karabakh prior to the 2020 war that saw Azerbaijan retake much of it, and Baku’s desire to disband the Artsakh government.
The offensive was announced following two separate incidents earlier on Tuesday where Azerbaijani vehicles struck land mines allegedly planted by Armenian forces. Baku says the death of two civilians when their truck struck a mine, and the death of four interior ministry staff when their vehicle struck another mine were proof of an “ongoing deliberate and planned policy of terror”.
Baku claims “only legitimate military targets are being incapacitated”, with some social media accounts linked to the Azerbaijani or Turkish states sharing videos of what are claimed to be Armenian-operated military hardware destroyed by Azerbaijani drones.
The mine incidents and offensive come just a day after the Red Cross conducted simultaneous deliveries of humanitarian aid through the Lachin corridor and the Aghdam roadway to Artsakh-held territory. The delivery was the first major passage of supplies to Artsakh since December, when Azerbaijani authorities blocked road shipments over accusations of arms smuggling.
The blockages had resulted in major food shortages, and warnings of an attempted genocide by starvation. The offensive is unlikely to assuage concerns of attempted genocide or ethnic cleansing, with European Union head diplomat Josep Borrell saying that “this military escalation should not be used as a pretext to force the exodus of the local population” in his call for a ceasefire.
The Azerbaijani government called on ‘illegal Armenian military formations’, likely referring to the Artsakh Defence Army, to “raise the white flag, all the weapons must be handed over, and the illegal regime must be dissolved” in a statement from Azerbaijan’s Presidential Administration.
In a Telegram post, Russian Foreign Ministry spokesperson Maria Zakharova appeared to mock Yerevan’s appeals to Russian peacekeepers stationed in Nagorno-Karabakh since the end of the 2020 war:
“The Armenian Foreign Ministry calls on the UN Security Council and Russian peacekeepers to take measures to stop Azerbaijan’s hostilities in Nagorno-Karabakh. But what about official Yerevan recognizing Nagorno-Karabakh as belonging to Azerbaijan?”
Yerevan is a treaty ally of Russia under the Collective Security Treaty Organization. However, the CSTO did not support Armenia diplomatically or militarily in the 2020 war, sparking resentment in Yerevan against the organization.