Russia: Armenia's criticism of our peacekeeping forces in Karabakh is "unacceptable"

Russia said on Friday that "public criticism" of its peacekeepers deployed in Azerbaijan's separatist Nagorno-Karabakh region was "unacceptable", a day after Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan criticized the force.

Azeri civilians who describe themselves as environmental activists have blocked the only road connecting Armenia with the Armenian-majority enclave since December 12.

Nagorno-Karabakh authorities say food, medicine and fuel are running out within the region.

On Thursday, the Armenian news website (HITEC) quoted Pashinyan as saying that the Russian peacekeepers "became a silent witness to the depopulation of Nagorno-Karabakh," after failing to reopen the road.

Pashinyan said that if Russian forces are unable to ensure stability and security in the region, they should make way for a United Nations peacekeeping mission.

"We consider any public criticism and provocations of our peacekeepers to be unacceptable and deliberate behavior that significantly harms the normalization process between Armenia and Azerbaijan," Maria Zakharova, a spokeswoman for the Russian Foreign Ministry, said.

Nagorno-Karabakh is internationally recognized as part of Azerbaijan, but most of its population is of Armenian origin and fell out of Baku's control in a war in the late 1980s and early 1990s, at a time when the Soviet Union was disintegrating.

In 2020, Azerbaijan regained territory in and around the enclave after a second war that ended in a ceasefire brokered by Russia, and peacekeepers deployed along the Lachin corridor, which became the only way to enter and exit Nagorno-Karabakh.

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