Renewed Azerbaijan/Armenia conflict a new threat to Russia’s delicate balancing act with key player Turkey

28 Sep, 2020
Azerbaijan has never forgotten its 1990s humiliation at the hands of Armenia. Now stronger than its sworn enemy, and emboldened by Turkish support, Baku’s assertiveness is creating a headache for Moscow.
Russian president Vladimir Putin once complained that communist leader Vladimir Lenin had placed a ‘time bomb’ under Russia. He had in mind the introduction of the federal principle after Lenin’s Bolsheviks took power in 1917. Lenin gave national minorities their own republics within the Soviet Union. In so doing, he created a situation which allowed those republics to secede from the Union once communist power collapsed.
Read more at /www.rt.com/russia/501967-karabakh-conflict

Turkey denies claims that its F-16 warplane shot down Armenian fighter jet, tells Yerevan to stop ‘cheap propaganda games’

29 Sep, 2020
Armenian claims that a Turkish F-16 warplane attacked and destroyed one of Yerevan’s Su-25 fighter jets are false, a spokesman for President Recep Tayyip Erdogan insisted on Tuesday evening. His remarks echoed those from Baku.
“The claim that Turkish F-16s shot down an Armenian plane is not true,” Fahrettin Altun told the press. Altun also urged Armenia to call a halt to the “cheap propaganda games” and withdraw its troops from “occupied territories” in the disrupted Nagorno-Karabakh region.
His assurances were backed up by Azeri Defense Ministry spokesman, Vagif Dergahli, who blasted reports of Turkish jets fighting for Azerbaijan as “lies and another fantasy of the Armenian military-propagandist machine.”
Earlier on Tuesday, Armenia announced that a US-made Turkish F-16 shot down one of its planes. The Soviet-built Su-25 was targeted while in Armenian airspace, and its pilot was killed in the attack, according to officials in Yerevan.
Read more at https://www.rt.com/news/502050-turkey-denies-shooting-armenian-jet/

Armenia claims Azerbaijani artillery attacks are intensifying as Nagorno-Karabakh officials allege they’ve downed Azeri warplane

28 Sep, 2020
Fighting between Azerbaijani and Armenian forces over the disputed region of Nagorno-Karabakh intensified, on Monday, with heavy civilian and military casualties reported amid disputed claims of an Azeri warplane being shot down.
Azerbaijani troops and forces from Nagorno-Karabakh have been trading artillery and rocket fire, with the population of much of Karabakh told to seek shelter. Meanwhile, Armenia has declared a general mobilization and barred men between the ages of 18 and 55 from leaving the country, except with the approval of military authorities.
The most intense attacks took place in the Aras river valley, near the border with Iran, and the Matagis-Talish front in the northeast of the region, according to Armenian Defense Ministry spokesman Artsrun Hovhannisyan. He claimed that the Azeri side has lost 22 tanks and a dozen other vehicles, along with 370 dead and many wounded.
Read more at www.rt.com/russia/501974-karabakh-fighting