‘No alternative’ to 2020 ceasefire deal between Azerbaijan, Armenia: Kremlin
Russia has voiced "serious concern" about escalating tensions between Azerbaijan and Armenia over the disputed Nagorno-Karabakh region, calling on the two warring sides to adhere to a 2020 ceasefire agreement to end hostilities.
Dmitry Peskov, the Kremlin spokesman, said on Monday there was "no alternative" to the 2020 Russian-brokered agreement and Moscow was working with both Baku and Yerevan over the situation.
"Russia continues its mediation efforts, and mainly efforts to fulfill all the provisions of the trilateral documents that were signed two years earlier,” Peskov told reporters.
“Russia will continue to work on this with Yerevan and Baku. We continue contact, the situation is really difficult, it requires additional efforts, and most importantly, it requires the countries mentioned to understand that there is no alternative to the implementation of the mentioned agreements.”
The Kremlin spokesman made the call a day after Azerbaijan established a checkpoint at the start of the Lachin Corridor, the only road linking Armenia to Nagorno-Karabakh, in what Armenia termed as a "gross violation" of the 2020 ceasefire agreement.
Under the deal, Baku agreed at the time to "guarantee the security of persons, vehicles and cargo moving along the Lachin Corridor in both directions," with Yerevan saying the establishment of any checkpoints on the Hakari bridge in the Lachin corridor would be in breach of the affirmed-commitments.
The decades-long conflict between Armenia and Azerbaijan over Nagorno-Karabakh on the border between the two countries flared up again in September 2020, marking the worst escalation since the 1990s.
Karabakh is internationally recognized as part of Azerbaijan but has a primarily Armenian population that has resisted Azerbaijani rule since a separatist war there ended in 1994.
In 2020, the second Karabakh broke out, killing more than 6,500 people during a six-week conflict. The war ended with a Russian-brokered deal that saw Yerevan cede swathes of the Azerbaijani territory that it had been occupying for several decades.
Since December 2022, the Lachin Corridor — a road that runs through Azerbaijani territory and serves as the only link between Armenia and Nagorno-Karabakh — has been blocked by a group of people from Azerbaijan described by Baku as environmental activists protesting alleged illegal Armenian mining around the area.
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