Armenia to Russia: Offer aid in battle

Sides say vow to avoid neighborhoods broken

YEREVAN, Armenia — Armenia’s leader urged Russia on Saturday to consider providing security assistance to end more than a month of fighting over Nagorno-Karabakh, and both sides in the hostilities accused each other of breaking a mutual pledge not to target residential areas hours after it was made.

The fighting represents the biggest escalation in decades in a long conflict between Armenia and Azerbaijan over the separatist territory. As Azerbaijani troops pushed farther into Nagorno-Karabakh, Prime Minister Nikol Pashinian asked Russian President Vladimir Putin to quickly discuss possible security aid to Armenia.

There was no immediate response from the Kremlin.

Russia, which has a military base in Armenia and has signed a pact obliging it to protect its ally in case of foreign aggression, faces a delicate balancing act, of trying to also maintain good ties with Azerbaijan and avoid a showdown with Turkey.

Pashinian’s request puts Russia in a precarious position: joining the fighting would be fraught with unpredictable consequences and risk an open conflict with Turkey, while refusing to offer protection to its ally Armenia would dent Moscow’s prestige.

Nagorno-Karabakh lies within Azerbaijan but has been under the control of ethnic Armenian forces backed by Armenia since a war there ended in 1994. The latest outburst of hostilities began Sept. 27 and left hundreds — perhaps thousands — dead, marking the worst escalation of fighting since the war’s end.

The foreign ministers of Armenia and Azerbaijan met Friday in Geneva for a day of talks brokered by Russia, the United States and France, cochairs of the so-called Minsk Group of the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe that tries to mediate the decades-long conflict.

The talks concluded close to midnight with the two sides agreeing they “will not deliberately target civilian populations or non-military objects in accordance with international humanitarian law.”

But shortly after the mutual pledge was announced by the Minsk Group co-chairs, Nagorno-Karabakh authorities accused Azerbaijani forces of firing rockets at a street market and a residential building in the separatist region’s capital, Stepanakert. They said that residential areas in the town of Shushi also came under shelling.

“It seems they reached these agreements, but there is no truce at all,” said Karen Markaryan, a shop owner in Stepanakert.