On August 3, 2022, Azerbaijan attacked an ethnically Armenian area known as Nagorno-Karabakh. The European Union had called for a cease of hostilities between the two. Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan said he would soon talk to Azerbaijan President Ilham Aliyev. Both countries blame each other for the incident.
History
The area where Azerbaijan and Armenia reside is Transcaucasia, or South Caucasus, which the Russian Empire took control over in 1813. That control was then later passed on to the Soviet Union in 1917. The USSR recognized Nagorno-Karabakh as an autonomous region in Azerbaijan in 1923. Many Armenian sources (e.g., president.am) claim that this conflicted with an earlier agreement from 1920 that stated Nagorno-Karabakh was an integral part of Armenia. However, this is debatable as most of these sources are from Armenian domains. On the other hand, Vox claims that in 1921 Joeseph Stalin had placed the region under Azerbaijan's administration.
In the end, Nagorno-Karabakh ended up in Azerbaijani hands, and Armenia was upset. They claimed that there were reports of Azerbaijan discriminating against the Armenians in the region. However, the Soviet Union did not tolerate ethnic nationalism, so the calls for help were left unanswered. Finally, in 1988, as USSR control loosened across the state, legislation in the Nagorno-Karabakh supreme court legally let them be a part of Armenia. When the USSR dissolved in the 1990s, the Armenians could express their feelings toward Nagorno-Karabakh in Azerbaijan. They chose to express their feelings through war.
The war began in 1991 and ended in 1994 when Russia forced a ceasefire and kept a peacekeeping force in the area to prevent fighting. During that time of peace, Armenia controlled the area and other surrounding areas until 2020. In 2020, another conflict began that Azerbaijan had won with Turkish backing, mostly reclaiming the area and the previously lost sections of land. The rest of the unclaimed land was patrolled by the Russian peacekeeping forces.
Present
Russia called for a ceasefire between the two nations. According to CNN, one Azerbaijani soldier died in the shootout. Despite Nagorno-Karabakh being in Azerbaijan territory, it is filled with ethnic Armenians, who fought Azerbaijan in the 1990s until Russia sent a peacekeeping force into the area to prevent further fighting. As mentioned above, both nations blame each other for the incident.
According to CNN, the Russian defense ministry is taking measures to stabilize the situation.
We await further news.
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