Today marks the 20th anniversary of the Armenian occupation of the Kalbajar region of Azerbaijan.
The military operation to seize this border region with Armenia was carried out during the period March 27 - April 3, 1993. Armenian Armed Forces made a simultaneous attack on Kelbajar from two directions: the Agdara region of Karabakh and the Vardenis region of Armenia.
At that time, most of the armed forces of Azerbaijan were posted in the neighboring district of Lachin. In Kalbajar there were about 1000 Azerbaijani soldiers. 600 of them were located along the border with the Vardenis and Jermuk areas of Armenia over 122 km of the highlands. Another 300-350 people covered the Agdara direction.
On April 1 began the direct assault to the Kalbajar district center. The Armenian units from the Vardenis region passed into the large-scale attack, using tanks, manned by Russian crews. According to radio communications, coordination of the offensive Armenian forces was carried out from the territory of Armenia.
By the end of April 2 Armenian troops entered the district center of Kalbajar. On the same day there was the occupation of most of the northern part of Lachin and Kalbajar. On April 3, Azerbaijani troops left the last settlement in the area - the village of Yanshag and retreated to the Omar Pass on the Murovdagh Ridge.
As a result of the capture of the Kalbajar region, about 200 soldiers were killed, 300 were wounded and 35 soldiers of Azerbaijan were lost. Among the civilians the losses were 220 dead and 321 people missing.
Azerbaijan lost 2,000 square km of its territories and more than 60,000 residents of the Kalbajar region became IDP.
The reaction of the international community was in the adoption by the Security Council
UN in April 1993 of the 822nd resolution on which the occupation forces of Armenia should have immediately left the occupied territories. It recognized the sovereignty and territorial integrity of all the states in the region, demanding "immediate cessation of hostilities and the immediate withdrawal of occupying forces from the occupied regions of Azerbaijan, as well as urging the parties concerned to immediately resume negotiations in order to resolve the conflict in the peace process of the Minsk Group of the CSCE."
In the next three months there were taken 853, 874 and 884 UN Security Council resolutions with the same demand. Contrary to the expectations of Azerbaijan, the UN Security Council limited itself to the adoption of the resolutions and re-entrusted the fate of the conflict to the OSCE Minsk Group, in which an explicit tone was set by Russia. To this day, no point of the UN resolutions has ever been executed by the Armenian side. - 0 -
Politics
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Armenia is not against the dissolution of the OSCE Minsk Group, but does not consider it appropriate to discuss this issue now. "In the context of peace, we consider it possible to make a decision on the dissolution of the OSCE Minsk Group. When peace is an established fact, the existence of such a format may raise questions," Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan said at a press conference today. "The whole question is about the timing, we need to understand how effectively and correctly to turn such topics into a subject of discussion right now," the Armenian Prime Minister added.
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He expressed his willingness to meet with Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev at the border between the two countries. "A meeting with Ilham Aliyev could take place at the Armenian-Azerbaijani border. I am open to such a format," Pashinyan said at a press conference today. According to Pashinyan, Armenia recently presented another proposal for a peace treaty to Azerbaijan.
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On August 31, Azerbaijan observes a "day of silence" before the Sunday’s early parliamentary elections for the unicameral Milli Majlis. All electoral campaigning is prohibited 24 hours before the voting. The early elections were initiated by the ruling Yeni Azerbaijan Party. This decision was motivated by the overlap of the scheduled elections in November with the global UN forum - the COP20 climate conference taking place in Baku.
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On August 30, at approximately 22:55, the Armenian Nuclear Power Plant in Metsamor was disconnected from the country's power grid, as reported by the Armenian Ministry of Territorial Administration and Infrastructure. The shutdown was caused by a lightning strike, which triggered the plant's safety systems to switch the station to a safe shutdown mode. Currently, the plant's staff is working on restarting the facility.
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