For a month now, Azerbaijani environmentalists have been holding a picket on the Lachin road demanding that experts be allowed to visit the mines in Karabakh. The campaign began on December 12, 2022.

Assessing the outcome of the month-long picketing for Turan, head of the “Atlas Research Center”, Elhan Shahinoglu, claims a positive result: “We have shown that we have the right to take control of the road connecting Armenia and Karabakh.”

At the same time, he admits the possibility of transporting mines and weapons from Armenia to Khankendi in covered trucks of Russian peacekeepers. Distrust of the RMK is based on the fact that “during the two years of the existence of the posts of the Russian military contingent on the road from Armenia to Karabakh, weapons, ammunition and mines were transported. There were explosions on mines manufactured in 2021. The Russian military did not prevent this; instead, cooperated with the separatists.”, –

Shahinoglu insists on transferring the civilian picket to the format of a state checkpoint on the Lachin road, in order to exclude any possibility of transporting weapons to the separatists.

In turn, Milli Majlis deputy Rasim Musabekov stressed the necessity of setting up an Azerbaijani checkpoint on the Lachin road before these events, when the Armenian separatists blocked the road to two mines in the Agderi road, preventing Baku environmentalists from monitoring the situation. In a video interview, Musabekov offered to set up a checkpoint forcedly if the Armenians would not allow it to be done in a peaceful way.

Many have forgotten that the commander of the RPC, General Andrei Volkov, also spoke about the customs checkpoint, telling reporters that following the results of the Azerbaijani-Armenian negotiations, “an innovation in the form of mandatory customs inspection will appear at the checkpoint on the road from mainland Armenia to Karabakh and back, that is, on the Lachin road, respectively, equipment like x-rays, a gas analyzer, or at the very least dogs trained to search for drugs and explosives.”

Volkov did not specify who would manage this innovation on the Lachin road: the RPC or the customs officers of Azerbaijan. As a result, there is still no customs control.

On December 15, the participants of the environmental picket added to their demands to monitor two mines new ones arising from the sovereignty of our country: set up a state checkpoint along the entire Lachin road.

Diplomat, former Foreign Minister Tofik Zulfugarov, in an interview with Turan, put forward his proposal: since Armenians lie and confuse concepts as saying that Azerbaijan allegedly blocked Karabakh and condemned residents to starvation and genocide, we need to separate the concepts of “blockade” and “control”. Baku can open the road to Armenia through Kalbajar for them,” he said.

“We can offer Armenians to travel to Yerevan by a shorter route, but with mandatory passage of customs and border regulations common to any country, the same on the border of Azerbaijan with Georgia, Iran and Russia. Let the Armenians get used to border control,” Tofik Zulfugarov suggested.

In the future, the checkpoint should also appear on the Lachin road – he added

Source: Turan News Agency