Armenia offers to investigate Azerbaijan’s ceasefire violation allegations

Armenia has denied Azerbaijan’s allegations that its soldiers had fired at Azerbaijani military positions, saying it was ready to investigate Baku’s claims should its Defence Ministry provide ‘facts supporting’ its allegations.

The offer came as part of a statement issued by the Armenian Defence Ministry on Monday evening denying Azerbaijani claims that Armenian troops had fired at Azerbaijani positions from the Syunik and Gegharkunik provinces throughout the day.

The statement was the fourth of its kind in less than two days denying Azerbaijan’s claims. However, Armenia’s offer to investigate Azerbaijan’s claims marked a shift from the rhetoric it usually employs when denying ceasefire allegations.

The Armenian Defence Ministry also reiterated that Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan’s office proposed the creation of a joint Armenian–Azerbaijani mechanism to investigate cases of alleged ceasefire violations, to which Azerbaijan ‘has not responded to date’.

Azerbaijan first accused Armenian soldiers of opening fire at its positions on Sunday morning, saying that the attack had come from the direction of Tegh near Goris in the southern Syunik province.

Hours later, Azerbaijan accused Armenian soldiers of firing at its units from Khoznavar in Syunik.

The last accusation of the day came later in the evening, with Azerbaijan claiming that Armenian soldiers fired at its units from Akner near Goris.

Armenia’s Defence Ministry in response three times denied that its units fired at Azerbaijani positions throughout the day with virtually identical statements each time saying that the Azerbaijani Defence Ministry’s claims did not ‘correspond to reality’.

The Azerbaijani Ministry’s statements used Azerbaijani toponyms to refer to the Armenian territories from which it alleged the violations took place.

Armenia’s Parliamentary Speaker Alen Simonyan has also commented on the accusations, with Armenpress citing him as saying that the accusations were part of a ‘fresh disinformation campaign’ by Azerbaijan’s military in a bid to ‘justify Azeri leader Ilham Aliyev’s recent statement about “zero trust” ’.

Simonyan was referring to a statement made by Aliyev on 13 March, the day Armenia and Azerbaijan announced that they had reached an agreement on a peace deal.

‘I think it was done to justify the Azerbaijani president’s statement, who said they have near zero trust towards the Armenian side, which itself is surprising for me because our work and conduct, and the logic of the statement about finalising the treaty speaks about the opposite’, Simonyan said.

Azerbaijan’s accusation came days after it announced that they had reached an agreement on a peace deal with Armenia — an announcement that was followed by several mixed messages by Azerbaijan about the deal.

Hours after the deal was announced, Azerbaijan’s Foreign Ministry named amendments to Armenia’s constitution and the dissolution of the ‘obsolete and dysfunctional’ OSCE Minsk Group as preconditions to signing the deal.

Armenia has repeatedly denied that amendments to its constitution were part of the peace talks with Azerbaijan, but its government has nonetheless been actively pushing for amendments.

Since Armenia’s offer to investigate the ceasefire violations, Azerbaijan’s Defence Ministry issued three statements accusing it of additional attacks, including one on Tuesday morning.

None of the Azerbaijani statements have acknowledged Armenia’s offer, despite Yerevan continuously denying that any incident had taken place and reminding Baku that it was ready to investigate its claims of ceasefire violations.

As of Tuesday at 12:00, Azerbaijan has accused Armenia of violating the ceasefire agreement a total of seven times.

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