YEREVAN, June 22. /TASS/. Azerbaijan is impeding the transportation of deliveries of medicine and goods via the Lachin corridor, that are supplied by the Red Cross organization, Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan said on Thursday.

"There is no movement at all regarding civilian, transport cargo transportation along the Lachin corridor," Pashinyan stated addressing the country’s governmental session.

"Moreover, they even stop the Red Cross vehicles," Pashinyan continued. "The population of Nagorno-Karabakh lack supplies of the natural gas and electricity power, while local power supplies partly meet regional demands."

Azerbaijan has earlier established a checkpoint in the Lachin corridor. The Armenian Foreign Ministry criticized the move as a blatant violation of the trilateral agreement reached by the leaders of Armenia, Azerbaijan, and Russia, Nikol Pashinyan, Ilham Aliyev, and Vladimir Putin in 2020, which put an end to hostilities around Nagorno-Karabakh that had been going on since the fall of that year.

In line with the terms of the agreement, Russian peacekeepers are deployed in the Lachin corridor. The Armenian prime minister has repeatedly expressed concern about the closure of the corridor and stated that Armenia will raise this issue in talks with Moscow.

The situation in Nagorno-Karabakh escalated on September 27, 2020. On November 9, 2020, Russian President Vladimir Putin, Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev and Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan signed a joint statement on the full cessation of hostilities. The sides stopped at their positions at that moment, a number of districts went under Baku’s control, and Russian peacekeepers were deployed to the contact line as well as to the Lachin Corridor.

Lachin Corridor

On December 12, 2022, a group of Azerbaijani activists claiming to be environmentalists blocked the Lachin Corridor, the only road connecting Armenia and Nagorno-Karabakh and the place where Russian peacekeepers are temporarily stationed.

Baku stated that blocking the road was not the goal of the protest and civilian vehicles could freely move in both directions. However, Yerevan slammed the activity as a provocation by the Azerbaijani authorities aimed at creating a humanitarian disaster in the unrecognized Republic of Nagorno-Karabakh.

Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan pointed out that Nagorno-Karabakh was facing food shortages due to the blocking of the corridor. On December 14, Armenia requested that the European Court of Human Rights compel Azerbaijan to unblock the Lachin Corridor.