Armenia reports truce after new clashes with Azerbaijan

Late on Wednesday, a senior Armenian official said that a truce had been agreed with Azerbaijan, following two days of violence linked to a decades-old dispute between the ex-Soviet states over the territory of Nagorno-Karabakh.

There was no word from Azerbaijan about a truce to halt the deadliest exchanges between the countries since 2020.

Russia is the pre-eminent diplomatic force in the region, and maintains 2,000 peacekeepers there. Moscow brokered the deal that ended the 2020 fighting — dubbed the second Karabakh war — in which hundreds died.

Russian news agencies quoted Armen Grigoryan, Secretary of Armenia's Security Council, as telling Armenian television:

"Thanks to the involvement of the international community, an agreement has been reached on a cease-fire."

The announcement said the truce had been in effect for several hours. Armenia's defence ministry had earlier said that shooting in the border areas had stopped.

Each side blames the other for the fresh clashes.

Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan had previously told parliament that 105 Armenian servicemen had been killed since the violence began this week. Azerbaijan reported 50 military deaths on the first day of fighting.

Reuters was unable to verify the two sides' accounts.

Russian diplomatic efforts

Grigory Karasin, a senior member of Russia's upper house of parliament, told the RIA news agency that the truce was clinched largely through Russian diplomatic efforts.

Kremlin leader Vladimir Putin had spoken to Pashinyan, he said. Putin had appealed for calm after violence erupted, and other countries called for restraint on both sides. In his address to parliament, Pashinyan had said that his country had appealed to the Moscow-led Collective Security Treaty Organization to help restore its territorial integrity.

"If we say that Azerbaijan has carried out aggression against Armenia, it means that they have managed to establish control over some territories," Russia's Tass agency quoted him as saying.

Armenia and Azerbaijan have been fighting for decades over Nagorno-Karabakh — a mountainous enclave recognised as part of Azerbaijan — while being home to a large Armenian population.

Fighting first erupted towards the end of Soviet rule, and Armenian forces took control of large swathes of territory in and around it in the early 1990s. Azerbaijan largely retook those territories in over six weeks in 2020.

Skirmishes have since erupted periodically, despite meetings between Pashinyan and Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev, that are aimed at clinching a comprehensive peace settlement.

French Foreign Minister Catherine Colonna, in a call with her counterparts from both countries, also called for the "end of strikes against Armenian territory".