Azerbaijan violates ceasefire 1,500 times over past week

Tension on the Line of Contact between the armed forces of Nagorno Karabakh and Azerbaijan reached a peak in the period of January 19-25. The Azerbaijani side violated the ceasefire about 1,500 times, with over 14,000 shots fired from guns of various calibers at Armenian frontline positions, the press service of the NKR Defense Ministry reported. Armenian servicemen confidently performed their duties along the Line of Contact.

The NKR Defense Army has issued a statement saying that this week Azerbaijan made unsuccessful subversive attempts to infiltrate in the northeastern and southeastern directions of the Line of Contact. Thanks to the selfless and well-organized defense of Armenian servicemen, the enemy was thrown back, suffering considerable losses.

“Azerbaijani Defense Ministry immediately refuted information about the subversive attempts, saying that the loss of the Armenian side is the result of acts of harassment among servicemen in the army. But it should be noted that after those subversive actions the Azerbaijani military propaganda machine started spreading information about suicides, deaths and injuries of its servicemen on the frontline due to diseases and safety rule violations. The number of such incidents over two days was so great (2 dead and 6 injured servicemen) that Azerbaijani Defense Ministry had to make a statement that Azerbaijani troops allegedly managed to foil an Armenian subversive attempt and repel Armenian troops, inflicting heavy losses on them,” the NKR Defense Army’s statement reads.

In fact Azerbaijan is trying to justify its own losses resulting from the events that took place on the night of January 20.
“The only conclusion to be drawn is that the new defense minister of Azerbaijan repeats the mistakes of the old one… It is not difficult to realize what will happen if such mistakes continue…

As for the sabotage, there is nothing new about Azerbaijan’s conduct, which is a manifestation of Azerbaijan’s destructive police ahead of important diplomatic events. Azerbaijan behaved in a similar way ahead of the Kazan meeting of the presidents and the regional trip of U.S. Secretary of State, while the last incident was probably due to the upcoming visit of Armenian and Azerbaijani foreign ministers in Paris on January 24.

By such provocative actions, Azerbaijan tries to show that it disagrees with the military political situation in the region following the signing of the ceasefire agreement and also expressed its disagreement with the process being conducted as part the Karabakh conflict resolution.

However, in spite of Azerbaijan, regional countries stated at various levels that there is no alternative to a political settlement of the Karabakh problem and that tension and provocative actions on the frontline are a serious blow to regional stability and security, urging the sides to look for solutions at the negotiating table,” the statement of NKR Defense Army says.