Azerbaijan State Border Service informed that it temporarily shut the road linking its breakaway Nagorno-Karabakh region, condemning the Armenia branch of the Red Cross for smuggling.
Azerbaijan on Tuesday temporarily shut the only road linking its breakaway Nagorno-Karabakh region with Armenia, accusing the Armenian branch of the Red Cross of smuggling.
The Armenian-populated region has been at the center of a decades-long territorial dispute between the Caucasus arch-foes, which have fought two wars over the mountainous territory.
The closure comes ahead of European Union-mediated talks in July between the ex-Soviet countries’ leaders, and as regional mediators, Washington, Brussels, and Moscow are distracted by the NATO summit in Lithuania.
Azerbaijan’s State Border Service said the decision was made after the Red Cross failed to “take necessary steps to prevent illegal actions” such as smuggling mobile phones from Armenia to Karabakh, using the organization’s medical vehicles.
Azerbaijan in April set up the border point at the entrance to the Lachin corridor, exacerbating allegations from Armenia of a Karabakh “blockade.”
In late June, the Armenian branch of the Red Cross said that Azerbaijan was blocking access to Karabakh as concern grew over the humanitarian situation in the restive region.
Several days later, Azerbaijan’s state border service said traffic through the Lachin corridor, policed by Russian peacekeepers, was resumed.
The latest developments followed a months-long blockade by Azerbaijani environmental activists, which Yerevan claims spurred a humanitarian crisis and food and fuel shortages.
Azerbaijan insisted that civilian transport could go unimpeded through the Lachin corridor.
Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan said last month that the “humanitarian situation in Karabakh has worsened dramatically.”
Amnesty International said at the time that the blockade of the Lachin corridor “is endangering the lives of thousands of people” in Karabakh.
The two former Soviet republics fought two wars to control Karabakh in the 1990s and again in 2020.
Miroslava Salazar with AFP
