Baku, July 15, AZERTAC

An article by Azerbaijan’s Consul General in Los Angeles Nasimi Aghayev on Armenia’s recent military provocations against Azerbaijan has been published by the Spanish version of the influential “Los Angeles Times” newspaper (LA Times Español). The English version of the article was published on the Medium online media platform.

In the article titled “In the middle of COVID-19 crisis, Armenia launches military attack against Azerbaijan,” the Consul General notes that in order to invade strategic positions in Azerbaijan, starting on July 12, the Armenian army attacked, with heavy artillery, the positions of Azerbaijan’s armed forces along the Armenia-Azerbaijan border. Highlighting Azerbaijani casualties, he states that “the clashes along the border are continuing with Armenian army shelling both the military and civilian structures, and the situation is at risk of further escalation.”

Consul General Aghayev further mentions: “Armenia’s government under Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan has been struggling with a plethora of domestic problems that have vastly damaged the government’s reputation. The problems include the poor handling of COVID-19 (with over 32,000 confirmed cases and 573 deaths, Armenia has the highest number of COVID-19 infections and death toll in the South Caucasus), severe economic crisis, and attempts to sideline political opponents like the arrest and persecution of the country’s two former presidents, and bring about constitutional amendments that would remove the independence of the judiciary, which received much international criticism. Therefore this military operation could also serve the Armenian government’s agenda to distract attention from difficult internal issues.”

The Consul General stresses that in the beginning of 1990s, Armenia invaded Azerbaijan’s 20 percent sovereign territory, and as a result more than 800 thousand Azerbaijanis were expelled from their ancestral homes in Nagorno Karabakh and seven adjacent districts. He underlines: “Coupled with 250,000 Azerbaijanis expelled from Armenia, Azerbaijan has over 1 million refugees and internally displaced persons (IDPs), which makes Azerbaijan a country with one of the largest populations of forcibly displaced people in the world.”

Nasimi Aghayev highlights that despite the condemnation of Armenia’s illegal occupation and the support to Azerbaijan’s territorial integrity by the UN Security Council, the UN General Assembly, the Council of Europe, the European Parliament, NATO, the Organization of Islamic Cooperation, the Non-Aligned Movement and many other international organizations, Armenia still continues the illegal occupation. He also notes the importance of international pressure on Armenia.

Moreover, the Consul General mentions that Armenia is experiencing severe economic crisis, and has the highest poverty rate in the region, while Azerbaijan is the largest economy of the South Caucasus, implementing large-scale energy and transportation projects connecting continents, and is a reliable strategic partner of the U.S. in the South Caucasus.