“Azerbaijan has announced a major new military offensive in the breakaway region of Nagorno-Karabakh, declaring an ‘evacuation’ of ethnic Armenians in ‘the dangerous area’ and opening up a crisis that risks spiralling into all-out war.
The escalation comes after months of fruitless negotiations and amid growing speculation that Turkey-backed Azerbaijan has been gearing up to use force to bring a decades-long frozen conflict to an end. A war between Armenia and Azerbaijan in 2020 killed thousands on each side. Over the past months, Azerbaijan has been tightening a supply blockade of food and medicines into the ethnic Armenian enclave that lies entirely within its territory.”