Over the weekend Yerevan and Baku accused each other of ceasefire violations along their restive border, with each side rejecting the blame. No casualties were reported by either side.
Ethnic Armenian authorities in Stepanakert, meanwhile, claimed that Azerbaijani armed forces opened fire at a civilian’s tractor in the east of Nagorno-Karabakh, a region where Russian peacekeepers have been deployed since the 2020 Armenian-Azerbaijan war over the region.
Karabakh Armenian officials said the tractor that was used in the implementation of agricultural work was damaged as a result of the shooting. Azerbaijan’s Defense Ministry denied the Armenian claim about the ceasefire violation. But the fact of the ceasefire violation was later confirmed by the Russian Defense Ministry in its news bulletin.
Dmitry Peskov, a spokesman for Russian President Vladimir Putin, on Monday reminded that both sides committed to resolving issues through political and diplomatic means when their leaders held a trilateral summit with the Russian leader in Sochi on October 31.
“The statement adopted as a result of the tripartite meeting in Sochi emphasizes that the parties, Armenia and Azerbaijan, prefer exclusively peaceful, and political and diplomatic means of settlement. Therefore, we continue to call on both sides to avoid dangerous actions and steps that could cause tensions,” Peskov said, as quoted by Russian news agencies.
The latest reported tensions between Armenia and Azerbaijan came on the eve of another meeting between the two countries’ foreign ministers, Ararat Mirzoyan and Jehhun Bayramov, to be hosted by U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken in Washington on November 7.
Yerevan and Baku are expected to continue to work on a peace deal before a possible new Armenian-Azerbaijani summit in Brussels later this month.