Armenia announced on Tuesday that it had reached a truce with Azerbaijan, with Russia's "mediation", after a day of fighting near the disputed Nagorno-Karabakh region, which raised fears of a resumption of a war between Baku and Yerevan.

"With the mediation of the Russian side, an agreement has been reached to end the shooting at the eastern border of Armenia from 6.30 p.m." (2.30 p.m. GMT), the Armenian defense ministry said in a statement.

An Armenian soldier was killed, the statement said, and several others were injured in the clashes, for which Armenia and Azerbaijan blamed each other throughout the day, accusing each other of "aggression." "And" provocation ".

Armenia initially reported several "deaths" on the Armenian side in these battles.

Putin spoke to the Prime Minister of Armenia

The announcement of the truce came shortly after a call to this effect from Russian Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu, who spoke on the phone with his Armenian and Azerbaijani counterparts, urging both sides "to end the actions. which cause an escalation of tensions ”, according to the Russian army. Russian President Vladimir Putin spoke by telephone in the evening with Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pachinian.

The eruption of clashes between Armenia and Azerbaijan, which already clashed in a war over the Nagorno-Karabakh enclave last year, has raised fears of a resumption of hostilities between these two rival Caucasian countries.

In this context, the President of the European Council Charles Michel spoke by telephone with the Armenian and Azerbaijani leaders, calling on them to “urgently de-escalate”.

Precarious balance

These latest events illustrate the precarious balance that reigns in the powder keg of the Caucasus, almost a year to the day after the end of a bloody six-week conflict between Azerbaijan and Armenia in Nagorno-Karabakh. Armenia said on Tuesday that it had suffered human "losses", without giving any figures, in the clashes with Azerbaijan, and announced that it had lost control of "two military positions". In addition, twelve Armenian soldiers were taken prisoner, according to the Armenian ministry of defense, which affirmed to have also inflicted "important losses" to the Azerbaijani forces.

Nikol Pachinian denounced Tuesday an "aggression against the sovereign Armenian territory", during a meeting of the National Security Council.

Council secretary Armen Grigorian announced that Armenia, a member of an alliance led by Moscow, had called on Russia for help.

For its part, Azerbaijan denounced a "provocation of great magnitude", accusing Armenia of having attacked positions in the districts of Kalbajar and Lachin, west of Nagorno-Karabakh.

These districts were surrendered by Yerevan to Baku last year.

The most intense clashes since the end of the conflict

The Azerbaijani Defense Ministry claimed that Armenian soldiers were abandoning their military positions, "in panic", and reported two Azerbaijani soldiers injured. These fighting erupted despite the presence in this region of soldiers from the Russian peacekeeping forces, deployed in November 2020 as part of a ceasefire negotiated by Vladimir Putin to end the war. last year. The current clashes are the most intense since the end of this conflict after which Armenia was forced to cede several regions to Azerbaijan forming a glacis around Nagorno-Karabakh.

Populated mainly by Armenians, the mountainous region of Nagorno-Karabakh, supported by Yerevan, seceded from Azerbaijan after the fall of the USSR, leading to a first war in the 1990s which caused the death of 30,000 people and made hundreds of thousands of refugees.

These clashes came after weeks of growing tensions between these two former Soviet republics, which regularly report outbreaks of violence and victims in their armies.

They thus blamed each other for shooting at the border on Sunday.

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