A senior Armenian official said late Wednesday that a truce had been reached with Azerbaijan after two days of violence over the former Soviet states’ decade-long dispute over the territory of Nagorno-Karabakh.
There has been no word from Azerbaijan about a truce to end the deadliest exchanges between the countries since 2020.
Russia is the main diplomatic force in the region and has 2,000 peacekeepers there. Moscow brokered a deal that ended the 2020 fighting, dubbed the second Karabakh war, in which hundreds of people died.
Russian news agencies quoted Armen Grigoryan, secretary of the Security Council of Armenia, as saying on Armenian television: “Thanks to the participation of the international community, an agreement on a ceasefire was reached.”
The report says the truce is in effect for several hours. The Ministry of Defense of Armenia previously reported that the shooting in the border areas has stopped.
Each side blames the other for the new clashes.
Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan earlier told parliament that 105 Armenian soldiers had been killed since the violence began this week.
50 soldiers were killed in Azerbaijan during the first day of hostilities. Reuters could not verify the accounts of either party.
Grigory Karasin, a senior member of Russia’s upper house of parliament, told the RIA news agency that the truce was achieved largely thanks to Russian diplomatic efforts.
According to him, Russian President Vladimir Putin spoke with Pashinyan. Putin called for calm after the outbreak of violence, while other countries urged both sides to exercise restraint.
In his speech in parliament, Pashinyan said that his country has appealed to the Moscow-led Collective Security Treaty Organization to help restore its territorial integrity.
“When we say that Azerbaijan committed aggression against Armenia, it means that they managed to establish control over some territories,” Russian TASS agency quoted him as saying.
Armenia and Azerbaijan have been fighting for decades over Nagorno-Karabakh, a mountainous enclave that is recognized as part of Azerbaijan, although it has a significant Armenian population.
Fighting first began at the end of Soviet rule, and in the early 1990s, Armenian forces took control of large swathes of territory in and around it. Azerbaijan, with the support of Turkey, largely regained these territories in six weeks in 2020.
Since then, clashes have erupted periodically, despite meetings between Pashinyan and Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev aimed at achieving a comprehensive peace settlement.
Internal discontent in Armenia over defeat in 2020 has sparked repeated protests against Pashinyan, who has rejected reports of signing an agreement with Baku.
In a Facebook post, he accused the reports of “information sabotage by unfriendly forces.”
A full-blown conflict could embroil Russia and Turkey and destabilize an important oil and gas pipeline corridor in the same way that the war in Ukraine disrupts energy supplies.
Armenian Deputy Foreign Minister Paruir Haganisyan said the clashes could turn into a war, the second major armed conflict in the former Soviet Union, while the Russian military is focused on Ukraine.
Azerbaijan accused Armenia, which is in a military alliance with Moscow and where a Russian military base is located, of shelling its military units.
Baku reported that the Minister of Foreign Affairs of Azerbaijan, Jeyhun Bayramov, met with the adviser of the US State Department on the Caucasus, Philip Ricker, and told him that Armenia should withdraw from the territory of Azerbaijan.
US Secretary of State Anthony Blinken said on Tuesday that Russia could “stir” or use its influence to help “calm the waters”.
The Minister of Foreign Affairs of France, Catherine Colonna, in a conversation with her colleagues from both countries, also called to “stop the attacks on the territory of Armenia.”
