Armenia builds combat position in Azerbaijan's Khojaly in breach of trilateral deal

By Azernews

By Vugar Khalilov

The Armenian armed forces launched engineering, technical, and construction work to establish combat positions in the Khojaly region's Shushakend village on July 19, Azernews reports, citing local media.

To prevent this illegal conduct, which violates the trilateral agreement on Armenia's capitulation, units of the Azerbaijani armed forces launched warning fire and took all required precautions, including contacting the command of the detachment of Russian peacekeepers temporarily in charge of the area. A troop of peacekeepers arrived at the location of the event an hour later.

Instead of halting the unlawful operations of the Armenian armed forces and the ongoing work, the Russian peacekeepers protected the Armenian gangs and established conditions for them to continue working at night.

At a recent cabinet meeting on the results of six months of 2022, Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev said that Russia had undertaken to withdraw units of the Armenian armed forces from Azerbaijan’s internationally recognized territories; however, the Russian peacekeepers do not compel them to do so, in violation of the November 10, 2020, trilateral agreement signed by Azerbaijani, Armenian, and Russian leaders.

“The Declaration of 10 November actually represents an act of capitulation on the part of Armenia, and as a side defeated in the war, Armenia assumed certain obligations. These obligations are explicitly stated there. One of them is the withdrawal of Armenian armed forces from Karabakh. This issue has not been resolved to this day. We have raised this issue many times, but Armenia keeps delaying it. At the same time, we raised this issue with the Russian military leadership, and a high-ranking official of the Russian Defense Ministry, while on a visit to Azerbaijan a few months ago, promised to our Defense Ministry that Armenian armed forces would withdraw from Karabakh by June. It is the middle of July now, but this issue has not been resolved yet,” Aliyev said.

It is clear that the Russian peacekeeping presence not only does attempt to fix the situation but rather exacerbates the escalation that has occurred.

On July 19, Armenia announced that it would withdraw its troops from Azerbaijan’s Karabakh region as the two countries are trying to normalize their ties following years of conflict.

"The units of Armenian armed forces have been returning to Armenia after the cease-fire, the process is nearing completion and will end in September," Armenian security council secretary Armen Grigoryan told Armenpress.

Grigoryan said Russian peacekeepers in Karabakh "guarantee" the security of the ethnic Armenian population there.

A Moscow-brokered ceasefire deal that Baku and Yerevan signed on November 10, 2020, brought an end to six weeks of fighting between Armenia and Azerbaijan. The Azerbaijani army declared a victory against the Armenian troops. The signed agreement obliged Armenia to withdraw its troops from the Azerbaijani lands that it has occupied since the early 1990s.