Armenian soldiers guard a checkpoint on the road leading to Kalbajar, near the village of Charektar, on November 25, 2020.© Karen Minasyan, AFP
On Tuesday, Azerbaijan launched what they called “Localized anti-terrorism measures” against the breakaway region of Nagorno-Karabakh controlled by an Armenian Ethnic group fighting to break away from Azerbaijan since the collapse of the Soviet Union. Azerbaijan launched this operation after two civilians were killed by an anti-tank landmine Khojavand region by what they claim to have been “a sabotage group of the Armenian armed forces located in the territories” on the Azerbaijan Ministry of Foreign Affairs website.
On that same website, they also state “In order to ensure peace and security in the region, military provocations and terrorist acts committed by Armenia and the puppet regime it created must be resolutely condemned and prevented.” this is a result of the continuous conflict between Armenia and Azerbaijan since their independence.
War Mapper
Both nations went to war in the 1990s, with thousands of casualties on both sides of the conflict. The ethnic Armenians in Nagorno-Karabakh claimed large amounts of territory in southern Azerbaijan and declared the Republic of Nagorno-Karabakh independent from Azerbaijan. The conflict was called the First Nagorno-Karabakh War and conflict would break out again in 2020. On September 27th, 2020, Azerbaijan's forces conducted an offensive attack in the region, causing Armenia to attack Azerbaijanian forces in the region. It is unclear which side started the conflict, but it inflicted many casualties on both sides, estimates vary on the amount killed in the conflict, it is estimated between3,000 Azerbaijan soldiers and 4,000 Armenian's were killed in combat.
The Second Nagorno-Karabakh war would last for six weeks until Russia intervened in peace talks and as a result, there was a cease-fire in all hostilities. The Armenian ethnic group, however, lost most of its territory to Azerbaijan, and Russian peacekeepers were sent to the region.
However, with the war in Ukraine that has shown a poor performance by the Russian military, Armenia has questioned the ability of ally and neighbor Russia to keep the peace in the region and is also distancing itself from Russia to the West. Recently the Armenian government kicked off joint military exercises with the United States on September 11. Even the Prime minister of Armenia stated in an interview with Politico on September 13th, “Russia’s catastrophic invasion of Ukraine means Armenia can no longer rely on Moscow as a guarantor of its security, even as fears grow of a return to open conflict with Azerbaijan.”