“A number of institutional issues exist in relation to this issue. Namely, point 3 of the 2020 November 9 trilateral statement clearly says that a line of contact exists in Nagorno Karabakh and the Russian peacekeepers are deployed along it. This is the area which is called the area of responsibility of the Russian peacekeeping contingent in NK. We expect that any attempt to cross the line of contact will be thwarted by the Russian peacekeeping contingent, and that the Azerbaijani military detachments located inside from the line of contact will be withdrawn,” the Armenian PM said.

Speaking on the Russian peacekeeping contingent’s mandate, which Azerbaijan refuses to sign, the PM said that the signatures of Armenia and Russia are sufficient to fully implement this mandate.

“If not, then it is necessary to take measures to approve this mandate internationally or give a wider international mandate to the peacekeepers. I don’t want to open up too many working details now, but we’ve been concerned about these issues since November 2020, we’ve made efforts to achieve concrete solutions and now these efforts must be doubled and tripled,” the PM said.

On August 3, two Artsakh soldiers were killed and 19 others were wounded when Azerbaijani forces violated the ceasefire and launched an attack on Artsakh military positions. The Azerbaijani military used mortars, grenade-launchers, combat UAVs in attacking a permanent deployment location of an Artsakh military base.