The conflict has festered for decades. Now it has drawn in Turkey and grown more dangerous.
Amid the world’s profusion of wars, COVID crisis and turbulent U.S. elections, a reader could overlook the century’s worst eruption of bloodshed between Armenia and Azerbaijan.
For the second time this year, another round of fighting has broken out in Nagorno-Karabakh, home to the longest-running war on former Soviet soil. Since the late 1980s, the conflict has killed roughly 20,000 people and made refugees of hundreds of thousands more. The self-declared Nagorno-Karabakh Republic (officially named the Republic of Artsakh) enjoys close ties to Armenia (though Yerevan has not formally recognized the breakaway republic’s independence), while Azerbaijan insists that this area is its own territory. The stalemate regularly flares up as it has in the past week, but the latest escalation became more serious when Armenia mobilized its military (and Azerbaijan partially mobilized). What started this conflict and what are the risks of renewed fighting? Which is correct: Karabakh or Artsakh? Meduza reviews the background basics and answers other burning questions about a war that refuses to go away.
Any move to all-out war could drag in Russia and Turkey, which is a close ally of Azerbaijan.
Fighting between Azerbaijan and ethnic Armenian forces entered a fourth day on Wednesday in the biggest eruption of their decades-old conflict since a 1994 ceasefire.
The Human Rights Organization of Afrin has released a list of rebel divisions active in Syria that have been transported to Azerbaijan and hired as mercenaries to fight against the Artsakh military in the ongoing Azeri offensive.
According to the organization, 80 fighters from the seven different divisions were killed in action.
The Black Sea is becoming a region for the use of the military language between the armies of Russia and NATO,.
In major escalation, deadly clashes erupted along state border between Armenia and Azerbaijan, killing at least 18, raising risk of further hostilities in August.
The Islamic State (IS) extremist group has claimed responsibility for an attack in Russia’s North Caucasus region of Ingushetia, in which a police officer was killed.
British Royal Air Force fighter scrambled to intercept the Russian bomber that approached the air space of Romania over the Black Sea. The RAF’s press service reported that on Tuesday evening.
‘Operating from the Romanian Mihail Kogalniceanu Air Base near Constanta on the Black Sea coast, the RAF Typhoon responded to Russian Federation Air Force Tu-22 Backfire strategic bombers
NATO’s top military commander said during a visit to Kiev on Wednesday that Russian forces were still operating in eastern Ukraine, providing the “backbone” to separatist rebels fighting government forces.
NATO’s top military commander has also warned that Russia’s “militarisation” of the annexed Crimea region could be used by Moscow to exert control across the whole Black Sea region.