Azerbaijan Brandishes ‘Success’ In Nagorno-Karabakh Offensive As UN, Outsiders Urge Halt

Azerbaijan has appeared to signal its intention to continue military operations launched a day earlier in Nagorno-Karabakh despite appeals for a halt to the hostilities that have killed dozens so far in the mostly ethnic-Armenian breakaway region from the United Nations, Western powers, and Russia.

Azerbaijan’s Defense Ministry said early on September 20 that what it has described as an “anti-terrorist operation” targeting saboteurs was continuing “successfully.”

The UN Security Council has meanwhile scheduled an emergency meeting for September 21 as the international community seeks ways to avoid an intensification of a long-running conflict that has already sparked two intense wars between the post-Soviet Caucasus neighbors, most recently just three years ago.

Reports have cited nearly 30 people killed on the first day of the operation and hundreds more injured, with children among the casualties.

“The secretary-general calls in the strongest terms for an immediate end to the fighting, de-escalation, and stricter observance of the 2020 cease-fire and principles of international humanitarian law,” UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres’s spokesperson, Stephane Dujarric said.

U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken spoke by telephone with the leaders of both countries late on September 19.

The U.S. State Department said he urged Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev to stop military operations in Nagorno-Karabakh, which is internationally recognized as Azerbaijani territory, immediately and return to dialogue.

Blinken “noted President Aliyev’s expressed readiness to halt military actions and for representatives of Azerbaijan and the population of Nagorno-Karabakh to meet, and he underscored the need for immediate implementation,” according to the State Department.

Blinken reportedly told Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinian that the United States “fully supports Armenia’s sovereignty, independence, and territorial integrity.”

In an increasingly rare show of agreement with the West, Moscow called on both sides to stop the violence.

“Due to the rapid escalation of armed clashes in Nagorno-Karabakh, we call on the parties to the conflict to immediately stop the bloodshed, cease hostilities, and avoid civilian casualties,” the Russian Foreign Ministry said in a statement, according to TASS.

It added that Russian peacekeepers were assisting the civilian population in Nagorno-Karabakh, made up mostly of around 120,000 ethnic Armenians, and providing medical and evacuation assistance.

After weeks of bloody skirmishes and one day after an aid shipment was finally allowed into the area, Azerbaijan launched the major escalation on September 19 with the breakaway region already teetering on the brink of a humanitarian crisis after being essentially blockaded for more than eight months despite international calls for Baku to allow food and other shipments.

The shelling started shortly after Azerbaijan blamed what it called “Armenian sabotage groups” for two separate explosions that killed at least four military personnel and two civilians in areas of Nagorno-Karabakh that are under the control of Russian peacekeepers.

Those peacekeepers are in place since a cease-fire that ended six weeks of fighting in 2020 in which Azerbaijan recaptured much of the territory and seven surrounding districts controlled since the 1990s by ethnic Armenians with Yerevan’s support.

Azerbaijan’s Defense Ministry has said it is seeking the surrender and the withdrawal of Armenian troops from the region.

Yerevan has said it doesn’t have troops in Nagorno-Karabakh.

France called for an urgent UN Security Council meeting to tackle the crisis, which erupted as many world leaders gathered for a UN General Assembly in New York at which the Russian invasion of Ukraine is a major topic of speeches and debate.

French Foreign Minister Catherine Colonna called Baku’s latest operation “illegal, unjustifiable, and unacceptable.”

“I would like to emphasize that we hold Azerbaijan responsible for the fate of Armenians of Nagorno-Karabakh,” she said.

Albania, which holds the rotating Security Council chair, said the emergency session would take place on September 21.

German Chancellor Olaf Scholz said “the renewed military activities lead to a dead end,” adding, “They need to end.”

Azerbaijan’s Defense Ministry said on the first day of intensification that “only legitimate military targets are being destroyed,” and its Foreign Ministry said the only path peace in the region is the complete withdrawal of Armenian forces from the territory.

Azerbaijan’s Defense Ministry has claimed to have seized more than 60 military posts and destroyed up to 20 military vehicles.

The de facto human rights ombudsman in the ethnic Armenian-controlled Azerbaijani region said that two civilians had been killed and 23 wounded — including at least eight children — in the attacks.

And ethnic Armenians inside Nagorno-Karabakh quickly took to social media with posts of video and accounts saying the de facto capital, Stepanakert, known as Xankandi in Azeri, was under bombardment. There were no immediate details on damage or casualties there.

Armenia’s Defense Ministry said it has no forces in Nagorno-Karabakh and that Baku’s offensive “violated the cease-fire along the entire line of contact with missile-artillery strikes.”

Pashinian said he was looking toward Moscow, which leads a military security alliance that Armenia is a part of, and the international community, to help put a stop to Baku’s attacks.

“First of all, Russia must take steps and, secondly, we expect the UN Security Council to also take steps,” Pashinian said in televised comments.

In the evening, angry crowds gathered outside government buildings in Yerevan, calling for Pashinian to resign, and clashed with police.

Protesters angry by what they saw as Moscow’s failure to stop Azerbaijan also gathered outside the Russian Embassy in Yerevan, chanting anti-Russian slogans, TASS reported.

The European Union’s top diplomat, Josep Borrell, condemned the operation and called on Azerbaijan to stop its military activities in Nagorno-Karabakh, while saying Brussels remains committed to facilitating dialogue to bring a lasting peace to the region.

U.S. and European leaders had long called for Azerbaijan to ease the transit of humanitarian aid to the beleaguered region, which is experiencing shortages of food, energy, and medicine.

Armenia and Azerbaijan have fought two wars over Nagorno-Karabakh, a predominantly Armenian-populated mountainous enclave that is internationally recognized as part of Azerbaijan.

The cease-fire signed at the end of the 2020 conflict was hailed as a triumph in Azerbaijan, but Armenian losses sparked months of massive protests in Yerevan to demand Pashinian’s resignation.

Nagorno-Karabakh and seven nearby regions had been controlled by ethnic Armenians since a bitter war began as the Soviet Union crumbled in the late 1980s and then gave way to a three-decade “frozen conflict.”

With reporting by AFP, AP, and Reuters