Moscow has called on Baku to fully unblock the Lachin Corridor, stressing that such actions violate the provisions of the declaration reached in November 2020 that ended a six-week war.
The Lachin Corridor is the only road that links Armenia with Nagorno-Karabakh, which is international recognized as part of Azerbaijan but is home to more than 100,000 ethnic Armenians.
Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova said in a statement on June 23 that the entrance to the corridor had been blocked by Azerbaijan in a move she said increased tensions at a time when Baku and Armenia are trying to agree a peace treaty.
"Such steps lead to an increase in tension and do not contribute to the maintenance of a normal atmosphere around the ongoing process of normalization of relations between Azerbaijan and Armenia with the mediation of Russia," Zakharova said.
The statement also called on Azerbaijan and Armenia to adhere to existing agreements and exercise “restraint and awareness of responsibility” for ensuring security in the area of the Lachin Corridor.
“The Russian side continues its active efforts to settle the situation in contacts with Baku and Yerevan,” Zakharova said, expressing hope that Yerevan "will not isolate itself” from the trilateral talks.
Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova (file photo)
"The cessation of their cooperation has a negative impact on the atmosphere in the region and leads to the escalation of the situation on the ground," the statement said.
Tensions rose last week when Baku halted the movement of humanitarian convoys through the corridor, aggravating a humanitarian crisis in the Armenian-populated region.
The convoys were organized by Russian peacekeepers and the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC). Baku halted them following a shoot-out near an Azerbaijani checkpoint controversially set up there in late April.
Armenia and Azerbaijan have been locked in a conflict over Nagorno-Karabakh for decades. Some 30,000 people were killed in a war in the early 1990s that left ethnic Armenians in control of the region and seven adjacent districts of Azerbaijan proper.
Azerbaijan regained all the Armenian-controlled areas outside of Nagorno-Karabakh as well as chunks of territory inside the Soviet-era autonomous region in another war in 2020 that killed nearly 7,000 soldiers on both sides.
The six-week war ended with a Russian-brokered cease-fire under which Moscow deployed about 2,000 troops to serve as peacekeepers.
In mid-December, Azerbaijani activists began obstructing the Lachin Corridor, which Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinian said should be under the control of Russian peacekeepers.
In a speech to parliament in Yerevan last week, Pashinian accused Azerbaijan of "ethnic cleansing" with its blockade.
Baku has denied imposing a blockade, but has said it has taken what it called "relevant measures to investigate the reasons for this provocation, as well as to ensure the security of the border checkpoint."