French President Emmanuel Macron accused Russia on Wednesday of having “played the game” of Azerbaijan, with “Turkish complicity”, against Armenia and of carrying out a “destabilizing maneuver” in the region.
“Russia interfered in this conflict, obviously played Azerbaijan’s game with the complicity of Turkey and went back there to weaken Armenia,” he said in an interview on France 2 channel.
Before adding: “It is a destabilization maneuver by Russia that, in the Caucasus, intends to create disorder to weaken and divide us all.”
Two wars in the last 30 years
Armenia, an ally of Russia, and Azerbaijan, backed by Turkey, have fought two wars over the past three decades for control of Nagorno-Karabakh.
The 2020 war claimed the lives of more than 6,500 soldiers and was halted after a Russian-brokered ceasefire.
Armenia ceded territories it had controlled for decades, and Moscow deployed some 2,000 Russian soldiers to police the fragile truce.
“These soldiers are supposedly border guards,” said Emmanuel Macron. “Russia used this decades-long conflict,” he insisted.
286 deaths in September
The European Union will send a civilian mission “in days” to Armenia, along the border with Azerbaijan, to try to restore trust between the two countries and contribute to the demarcation of the disputed borders, he said, he recalled.
The principle of this mission was accepted on Friday in Prague after several hours of discussion between the Armenian Prime Minister, Nikol Pashinian, the President of Azerbaijan, Ilham Aliev, the President of the European Council, Charles Michel, and Emmanuel Macron.
In September, at least 286 people were killed in clashes between Armenia and Azerbaijan, the worst clashes between these two Caucasian neighbors since the 2020 war.
“Azerbaijan has launched several offensives along the border,” insisted the French president, while the two sides accuse each other of having started the clashes.
Source: BFM TV
