YEREVAN (RFE/RL) — Armenia expects Russian peacekeepers to provide “clear answers” over the latest escalation in Nagorno-Karabakh, where at least three ethnic Armenian soldiers were killed and several more wounded in clashes with Azerbaijani troops.
The ethnic Armenian soldiers were killed on March 25, authorities in Nagorno-Karabakh said, accusing Baku of violating a Russian-brokered cease-fire. Nagorno-Karabakh’s military initially said two soldiers were killed and later raised the number of dead to three and 14 wounded.
Eduard Aghajanyan, a member of the ruling Civil Contract faction in the Armenian parliament and chairman of the Foreign Relations Committee, said “advancing Azerbaijani armed forces appeared behind the Russian peacekeepers’ backs.”
Aghajanyan said areas in the east of Nagorno-Karabakh that Azerbaijani forces took control of as a result of their advance on March 24-25 were in the zone of Russian peacekeepers’ responsibility under the terms of the November 2020 cease-fire between Armenia and Azerbaijan brokered by Moscow.
“Therefore, we expect clear answers from our Russian partners about the conditions in which this happened,” Aghajanyan said at a news conference on March 25, adding that Yerevan also expects Azerbaijani forces to return to the positions from where they launched their advance and that the problem should be resolved “within the shortest possible time.”
He noted the use of attack drones, including Bayraktar TB-2s, in the skirmishes with Nagorno-Karabakh’s ethnic Armenian forces.
