Armenia shells Azerbaijani positions in liberated Kalbajar, Lachin

By Azernews

By Vugar Khalilov

The Armenian armed forces have shelled Azerbaijani military positions stationed in liberated Kalbajar and Lachin regions, Azernews reports, citing the Defense Ministry.

From the night of June 20 to the morning of June 21, the Armenian armed forces fired at the Azerbaijani military positions in the direction of Lachin’s Minkand and Kalbajar’s Yellija villages from their positions in Garakilsa region’s Saybali and Basarkechar’s Ashagi Shorja settlements near the state border, the ministry said.

The Azerbaijani army units took appropriate retaliatory measures to suppress the opposite side, the report added.

Armenia periodically shells Azerbaijani military positions located on its liberated territories. The previous truce violation took place on June 17 in the same direction.

To recap, on May 22, Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev, European Council President Charles Michel, and Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan met in Brussels. After the meeting, Michel said that Azerbaijan and Armenia agreed on a number of key issues, including the creation of border delimitation commissions, of which the first meeting was held on May 24.

Earlier, Ilham Aliyev stated that peace will return to the Caucasus based on the five principles Baku recently proposed for normalizing relations with Armenia.

In response to the peace negotiations with Azerbaijan, Armenia's revanchist opposition took to the streets, demanding the resignation of Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan. The street protests have been going on since mid-April, with no tangible outcomes.

The trilateral ceasefire deal, signed by the Azerbaijani and Armenian leaders with the mediation of the Russian president on November 10, 2020, ended the three-decade conflict over Azerbaijan’s Karabakh region, which along with the seven adjacent regions came under the occupation of Armenian armed forces in the war in the early 1990s.

The deal also stipulated the return of Azerbaijan's Kalbajar, Aghdam and Lachin regions. Before the signing of the peace deal, Azerbaijan liberated 300 villages, settlements, city centers, and historical Shusha city that had been under Armenian occupation for about 30 years.