Armenian, Azerbaijani Troops Open Fire as Border Skirmish Erupts

Azerbaijani military forces started combat with Armenia on Tuesday, according to the Armenian Ministry of Defense.

Both nations have had animosity towards one another after years of war and rising tensions, most notably resulting in a six-week war in 2020 over the Nagorno-Karabakh territory—a disputed region fought for between Armenian and Azerbaijani forces dating back decades.

The Twitter account OSINT Defender said on Tuesday that "heavy fighting" between both countries' militaries started north of the Village of Tegh, near the Lachin Corridor in Eastern Armenia. "What started as a Small Skirmish earlier now reportedly involves Artillery and possible Heavy Armor," the intelligence monitoring service wrote.

The Armenian Ministry of Defense tweeted on Tuesday that Azerbaijani military units

"opened fire at Armenian servicemen who were conducting engineering work in the direction of #Tegh community Armenian military took countermeasures." The MOD noted that, per preliminary information, the Armenian side had suffered fatalities and injuries in the attack.

Hours later, at around 5:30 p.m. local time, the ministry reported that Azerbaijani forces "continue the provocation" and allegedly used mortars. The Azerbaijan Ministry of Defense claimed the opposite, saying that it was retaliating to Armenian provocations.

The ministry said in a statement that "Armenian armed forces units from the positions in the direction of the Digh settlement of the Gorus region using small arms subjected to intensive fire the Azerbaijan Army's opposing positions stationed in the direction of the Lachin region." It added that "Azerbaijan Army Units took adequate retaliatory measures."

Newsweek reached out to the Armenian and Azerbaijani Ministries of Defense via email for comment.

A subsequent report from the Azerbaijan MOD on Twitter said that its country's "servicemen became [martyrs] and wounded as a result of #Armenianprovocation."

As of 7 p.m. local time, the Armenian MOD said that "the intensity of the firefight has significantly weakened" and that rumors of alleged shelling in the direction of Vardenis, a town in Armenia, "do not correspond to reality."

"The mentioned direction is relatively stable," it reported.

Ronald Grigor Suny, professor of history and political science at the University of Michigan, told Newsweek via phone that conflict between both nations goes back to the 1990s.

When Armenia defeated Azerbaijan that decade, he said they took an enclave "as kind of their little republic within Azerbaijan." Years later, in the fall of 2020, Azerbaijanis attacked Armenians "and basically battered them" with Turkish and Israeli drones and won the so-called second war.

"The Russians were supposed to separate the Armenians and Azerbaijanis and allow and protect and guarantee the Lachin Corridor—a single road that goes from the Republic of Armenia, to this enclave of mountainous Karabakh, which the Armenians call Artsakh," Suny said.

On December 12, 2022, Azerbaijanis "basically blockaded" that corridor, he added, which included the sending of eco-activists who were protesting mining in the region and they blockaded. Some 120,000 Armenians are cut off from medical, food and aid.

"Periodically there have been outbursts of fighting," he added. "Azerbaijani troops have crossed the border into Armenia. So, now with this blockade which is now entering its fourth month, the Azerbaijanis clearly are trying to intend...to force the 120,000 Armenians out of Karabakh—that is out of Azerbaijan altogether—and end that enclave's existence.

"They have already declared that the enclave, which had political autonomy under the Soviets and a de facto independence from roughly 1994 until the fall of 2020—they declared that that autonomy is abolished."

Elchin Amirbayov, the assistant to the first vice-president of Azerbaijan, wrote in a January Newsweek op-ed that "the resounding victory of Azerbaijan in the Second Karabakh War of 2020 created an historic opportunity to turn the page, to leave hostilities behind and normalize relations based on international law."

Amirbayov accused Armenia, its diaspora, and foreign supporters—including those in the West—of launching a propaganda campaign with the immediate goal of bringing American and European pressure on Baku. The longer-term goal, he said, is "to scuttle the peace process that began in November 2020, when Armenia acknowledged its defeat in the war."

Lachin Road, a ground connection linking Armenia with the Karabakh region of Azerbaijan, is viewed as pivotal to both nations. Amirbayov said a blockade of that road starting on December 12 "created a humanitarian disaster, endangering the lives of ethnic Armenians in Karabakh."

"It is part of a wider effort by Azerbaijan to deny the Karabakh Armenians their rights and security," he said.

Russia's role in the region has also been under a microscope, as has that of Iran.

Sam Brownback, former U.S. ambassador-at-large for International Religious Freedom and co-chair of the IRF Summit, and Peter Burns, executive director of the International Religious Freedom Summit, wrote in a Newsweek op-ed in March that due to the strategic location of the territory in question, "it is in the United States' national security interest to ensure a satisfactory resolution to this conflict."

"It is also in keeping with our national commitment to promoting religious freedom that we ensure endangered religious minorities receive protection," they wrote, citing Azerbaijan's alleged willingness to reconquer the region "even at the risk of displacing the 120,000 indigenous ethnic Armenians that live there."

Thomas de Waal, a senior fellow with Carnegie Europe, wrote in the Financial Times earlier this year that Moscow "seems unwilling to order its peacekeepers, their morale and numbers diminished by the Ukraine war," to confront Azerbaijani protesters and to remove the blockade.

"Russia has said almost nothing in public, reinforcing the suspicion that [Russian] President Vladimir Putin cares more about maintaining leverage over Armenia and Azerbaijan than pursuing a real peace agreement," De Waal wrote.

In January, Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan said his nation would not host Russian-led military exercises for the Collective Security Treaty Organization (CSTO) in 2023. His cited reasoning included Putin keeping a military presence in Armenia, in addition to not offering more support in Armenia's dispute with Azerbaijan.

Armenia had been a close ally of Russia as a member of the Moscow-led CSTO of former Soviet states.

Update 04/11/23, 4:25 p.m. ET: This story was updated with comment from Ronald Suny.