Armenia has claimed that Azerbaijani forces targeted military positions in the country’s autonomous Nakhchivan exclave.

A statement made on Sunday by the Azerbaijani Defence Ministry claimed that the Armenian military attacked Azerbaijani positions near the Yukhari Buzgov settlement, which is two kilometers from the border.

This indicates that the incident occurred late Saturday at 11: “As of 8 pm local time (1920 GMT), the necessary measures have been taken about our departments in the mentioned direction,” the statement said. The Armenian authorities have not reacted to the incident yet, but Yerevan dismissed similar statements earlier.

This is the sixth time Azerbaijan’s Baku has accused Armenia of using mines, with the previous case reported last Thursday. Ties between Baku and Yerevan have been strained since the Armenian troops seized the Karabakh region in 1991 and seven others internationally recognized as belonging to Azerbaijan.

Much of the area was captured by Azerbaijan in a 44-day war in the autumn of 2020, signed with Russian mediation, which paved the way to establishing diplomatic relations and delimitation of the border. In September 2023, Azerbaijan resumed full sovereignty in Karabakh after an “anti-terrorist operation” after the separatists in the region were put into surrender.

Armenia and Azerbaijan continue to accuse each other of provocation despite the ceasefire agreement. This latest incident in the Nakhchivan exclave makes an already precarious peace in the region even worse. 

Over the years, the conflicting parties of the Nagorno-Karabakh war have been Azerbaijan and Armenia. Armenian and Azerbaijani nations have recently had a conflict over the disputed region of Nagorno-Karabakh, making territorial conflicts as well as ethnic clashes reoccurring events.

The international community has urged several times to end the confrontation and start negotiations, but the constant resurgence of the conflict has left the region open to new outbreaks. The prospects for developing Armenian-Azerbaijani relations after the defeat were first Russia’s weakening position in regulating the conflict and the growing stakes from other great powers. 

Such extended aggression from the Armenian side to these current claims adds another layer of controversy to the whole mess. This paper seeks to argue that as the two powers compete for power and security of respective territories, the region is at a crossroads between peace and security instability.