Russia accuses France of fomenting war in the Caucasus with arms sales – POLITICO

Paris has intensified its military cooperation with Yerevan in recent months with contracts and training. Arms sales include GM200 air surveillance radars made by Thales, while negotiations are underway on contracts for Mistral missiles made by MBDA.

Earlier on Tuesday, Azerbaijan accused France of undermining the stability of the turbulent region, less than a year after Baku itself launched a military offensive against ethnic Armenian forces in the breakaway Upper region. -Karabakh.

“France's equipping of Armenia with deadly and offensive artillery installations and other types of weapons, despite the warning of the Azerbaijani side, is further proof of France's provocative activities in the Caucasus of the South,” the Azerbaijani Defense Ministry said in a statement.

However, Armenia – and France – accuse Azerbaijan of trying to resolve a decades-old conflict by force and seeking to disrupt the conclusion of a peace agreement between the two former Soviet republics.

“Azerbaijan’s practice of predicting regional escalation at every opportunity is alarming,” Armenia’s Foreign Ministry said in a statement. The ministry added that this “proves” that Azerbaijan intends to avoid concluding a peace agreement with Armenia with a view to launching new aggression after the conflict. UN Climate Change Conference COP29 in Baku in November.

Russia has historically armed Azerbaijan and Armenia, providing weapons used in a series of wars between the two countries since the fall of the Soviet Union. A bitter conflict in the 1990s saw hundreds of thousands of Azerbaijanis displaced from within their own borders and Armenian forces take control of Nagorno-Karabakh.