Azerbaijani pro-government media claims Armenia will launch war against Azerbaijan in April

In an article rife with AI imagery and baseless claims, the Azerbaijani pro-government media outlet Caliber has claimed that Armenia is preparing to launch a war against Azerbaijan in April with the help of the civilian EU Mission in Armenia.

The Caliber article was published on Wednesday and claimed the information was received from ‘trusted sources’.

The article cited its previous reports claiming that the Armenian government is ‘actively preparing for a new war with Azerbaijan’.

‘The logic of recent actions by the Armenian government, which is becoming increasingly emboldened by revanchist sentiments and intensifying its militarisation, indicates that the region is on the brink of another war, likely provoked by Armenia’, Caliber wrote.

They also claimed that the EU Mission in Armenia has been playing ‘a key role in the escalation’, accusing it of ‘intelligence gathering’ along the border with Azerbaijan, claiming that it ‘has been intensified, particularly in areas where potential clashes may occur’.

‘In effect, under the guise of monitoring, they are carrying out tasks to transmit data to the Armenian military command, which directly violates the principles of neutrality’, Caliber claimed.

Azerbaijan, and to a lesser extent Russia, have consistently been criticising the EU Mission on the Armenian border since its deployment in February 2023, accusing it of spying on Azerbaijan, Russia, and Iran.

Caliber went on to criticise Armenia’s acquisition of military equipment from France and India and its receipt of non-lethal aid from the EU Peace Facility. They wrote that the ‘full responsibility for any potential resumption of hostilities will fall on Armenia and its backers’.

The article also claimed that Armenia ‘is no longer hiding its preparations for a new round of confrontation’, citing the Armenian government’s recent decision to hold reservist training sessions between 1 April–13 June.

‘It is important to note that these training sessions will last a record ten weeks, significantly exceeding the usual duration of such preparations’, Caliber wrote.

The training in question has been held by Armenia on a regular basis since 2021.

On 6 March, the Armenian government issued a decree announcing the dates for the training programme in 2025, but capped the number of days a reservist will be required to attend training to ‘no more than 25 calendar days’. Additionally, beginning in 2023, the government reduced the mandatory training period for reservists from three months to 25 days per person.

Caliber has claimed that the duration of the training significantly exceeded ‘the usual duration of such preparations’. Azerbaijan’s own military service law requires reservists under 45 to report for training once a year for a period of up to two months.

Caliber’s other claims cannot be independently verified, and the outlet did not provide any evidence to support its accusations.

On Wednesday, Azerbaijan’s Ambassador to Belgium, Vagif Sadigov, shared the article on X, with a caption reading: ‘after crossing red lines: don’t say we didn’t tell you…’

On the same day as the article’s publication, Azerbaijani Foreign Minister Jeyhun Bayramov criticised Armenia’s ‘rapid’ rearmament, saying that it had a tendency towards revanchism, which he said posed the ‘biggest obstacles to the peace process’.

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The two foreign ministers also discussed increased cooperation in regional organisations.

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Earlier in 2025, Azerbaijani Ilham Aliyev openly threatened Armenia in a statement calling the country a ‘fascist state’ and saying that ‘either the Armenian leadership will destroy it or we will’.

Months later, in March, Aliyev claimed in a speech at the opening of the Iğdır–Nakhchivan gas pipeline that the Soviet authorities ‘separated West Zangezur from Azerbaijan and annexed it to Armenia’ in 1920, which entailed ‘interrupting the overland connection between the main part of Azerbaijan and its inseparable part, Nakhchivan’.

While the Armenian authorities have not commented or reacted to the Caliber article, Foreign Minister Ararat Mirzoyan on Tuesday told India’s WION TV that defence cooperation between their two countries and Armenia’s purchase of Indian-made equipment was ‘not intended to be used […] against any other third party’. He noted that it was obtained by Armenia as part of reforms in its defence sector.

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Armenian Foreign Minister Ararat Mirzoyan and his Indian counterpart Subrahmanyam Jaishankar signed two cooperation agreements during the state visit.

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On Wednesday, Mirzoyan said that Armenia ‘already expressed our approach regarding Azerbaijan’s 12th proposal on the peace treaty’, which Armenia received in February. Mirzoyan also noted that ‘soon we will have an opportunity to discuss this approach and overall all issues pertaining to the signing or finalisation of that agreement with the Azerbaijan side’.