The first meeting of foreign ministers of Russia, Armenia and Azerbaijan after the September lightning offensive by Azeri forces in Nagorno-Karabakh will also take place amid rising tensions in the Middle East.

IRNA news agency quoted the foreign ministry as saying the countries wanted to talk about regional issues “without the interference of non-regional and Western countries”.

That was an implicit reference to the United States and the European Union, whose involvement in the search for a peace agreement between Armenia and Azerbaijan has particularly annoyed Moscow.

Russia’s Interfax news agency said Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov would travel to Tehran for the meeting.

Since launching its full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, Moscow has sought to firm up military and diplomatic ties with countries outside the traditional West. Lavrov has met his Iranian counterpart several times since.

Russia regards itself as the security guarantor between Azerbaijan and Armenia, but the demands and distractions of its war in Ukraine have led to a weakening of its influence.

Azerbaijan last month staged a lightning offensive to regain control of the region of Nagorno-Karabakh where ethnic Armenians had enjoyed de facto independence since breaking away in the 1990s.

More than 100,000 ethnic Armenians were forced to flee and Armenia has accused Azerbaijan of carrying out ethnic cleansing – a claim Azerbaijan denies, saying people were free to stay and be integrated into Azerbaijan.

The two countries have fought two wars in the past three decades and have so far failed to reach a peace deal despite long-running efforts by the United States, EU and Russia.

The so-called 3+3 South Caucasus Platform, which first held talks in 2021, were to include also Georgia, but Georgia has stated previously it did not plan to participate in the initiative and said on Sunday it will not be coming to Teheran.

Azerbaijan’s defence ministry said in a statement that up to 3,000 military personnel were participating in exercises named for the founder of modern Turkey, Mustafa Kemal Ataturk.

It said the drills were being held across Azerbaijan, including in Baku, the Nakhichevan exclave which borders Turkey, and in what the ministry called the “liberated territories” of Karabakh.

Turkey has close linguistic and cultural links to Azerbaijan, and offered Baku military and political support during its three decade-long conflict with Armenia, with which Ankara has no formal diplomatic relations.

Armenia and Azerbaijan have recently signalled willingness to sign a peace treaty formally ending their conflict following Azerbaijan’s victory in Karabakh and the exodus of almost all the region’s 120,000 ethnic Armenians.

The foreign ministers of the two countries, along with those of Turkey, Iran and Russia, were due to hold talks hosted by Tehran on Monday on progress towards a peace agreement.

However, Baku this month accused Yerevan of undermining the peace process with “aggressive rhetoric”.

Armenia describes the Karabakh Armenians’ flight as ethnic cleansing driven by the threat of violence after a nine-month blockade of essential supplies, the latest chapter in a conflict between Christian Armenians and Turkic Muslim Azeris that goes back more than a century.

Azerbaijan says the Karabakh Armenian civilians were welcome to stay and be integrated in Azerbaijani society, but left voluntarily.

Just weeks before Azerbaijan launched its 24-hour assault on Sept. 19, Azerbaijani military cargo planes repeatedly flew between a southern Israeli airbase and an airfield near Nagorno-Karabakh, according to flight tracking data and Armenian diplomats, even as Western governments were urging peace talks.

The flights rattled Armenian officials in Yerevan, long wary of the strategic alliance between Israel and Azerbaijan, and shined a light on Israel’s national interests in the restive region south of the Caucasus Mountains.

“For us, it is a major concern that Israeli weapons have been firing at our people,” Arman Akopian, Armenia’s ambassador to Israel, told The Associated Press. In a flurry of diplomatic exchanges, Akopian said he expressed alarm to Israeli politicians and lawmakers in recent weeks over Israeli weapons shipments.

“I don’t see why Israel should not be in the position to express at least some concern about the fate of people being expelled from their homeland,” he told AP.

Azerbaijan’s September blitz involving heavy artillery, rocket launchers and drones — largely supplied by Israel and Turkey, according to experts — forced Armenian separatist authorities to lay down their weapons and sit down for talks on the future of the separatist region.

The Azerbaijani offensive killed over 200 Armenians in the enclave, the vast majority of them fighters, and some 200 Azerbaijani troops, according to officials.

There are ramifications beyond the volatile enclave of 4,400 square kilometers (1,700 square miles). The fighting prompted over 100,000 people — more than 80% of the enclave’s ethnic Armenian residents — to flee in the last two weeks. Azerbaijan has pledged to respect the rights of ethnic Armenians.

Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan has termed the exodus “a direct act of an ethnic cleansing.” Azerbaijan’s Foreign Ministry strongly rejected the accusation, saying the departures are a “personal and individual decision and (have) nothing to do with forced relocation.”

Israel’s foreign and defense ministries declined to comment on the use of Israeli weapons in Nagorno-Karabakh or on Armenian concerns about its military partnership with Azerbaijan. In July, Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant visited Baku, the Azerbaijan capital, where he praised the countries’ military cooperation and joint “fight against terrorism.”

Israel has a big stake in Azerbaijan, which serves as a critical source of oil and is a staunch ally against Israel’s archenemy Iran. It is also a lucrative customer of sophisticated arms.

“There’s no doubt about our position in support of Azerbaijan’s defense,” said Arkady Mil-man, Israel’s former ambassador to Azerbaijan and current senior researcher at the Institute for National Security Studies in Tel Aviv. “We have a strategic partnership to contain Iran.”

Although once resource-poor Israel now has plenty of natural gas off its Mediterranean coast, Azerbaijan still supplies at least 40% of Israel’s oil needs, keeping cars and trucks on its roads. Israel turned to Baku’s offshore deposits in the late 1990s, creating an oil pipeline through the Turkish transport hub of Ceyan that isolated Iran, which at the time capitalized on oil flowing through its pipelines from Kazakhstan to world markets.

Azerbaijan has long been suspicious of Iran, its fellow Shiite Muslim neighbor on the Caspian Sea, and chafed at its support for Armenia, which is Christian. Iran has accused Azerbaijan of hosting a base for Israeli intelligence operations against it — a claim that Azerbaijan and Israel deny.

“It’s clear to us that Israel has an interest in keeping a military presence in Azerbaijan, using its territory to observe Iran,” Armenian diplomat Tigran Balayan said.

Few have benefited more from the two countries’ close relations than Israeli military contractors. Experts estimate Israel supplied Azerbaijan with nearly 70% of its arsenal between 2016 and 2020 — giving Azerbaijan an edge against Armenia and boosting Israel’s large defense industry.

“Israeli arms have played a very significant role in allowing the Azerbaijani army to reach its objectives,” said Pieter Wezeman, senior researcher at the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute, which tracks arms sales.

Israeli long-range missiles and exploding drones known as loitering munitions have made up for Azerbaijan’s small air force, Wezeman said, even at times striking deep within Armenia itself. Meanwhile, Israeli Barak-8 surface-to-air missiles have protected Azerbaijan’s airspace in shooting down missiles and drones, he added.

Just ahead of last month’s offensive, the Azerbaijani defense ministry announced the army conducted a missile test of Barak-8. Its developer, Israel Aerospace Industries, declined to comment on Azerbaijan’s use of its air defense system and combat drones.

But Azerbaijan has raved about the success of Israeli drones in slicing through the Armenian defenses and tipping the balance in the bloody six-week war in 2020.

Its defense minister in 2016 called a combat drone manufactured by Israel’s Aeronautics Group “a nightmare for the Armenian army,” which backed the region’s separatists during Azerbaijan’s conflict with Nagorno-Karabakh that year.

President Ilham Aliyev in 2021 — a year of deadly Azerbaijan-Armenian border clashes — was captured on camera smiling as he stroked the small Israeli suicide drone “Harop” during an arms showcase.

Israel has deployed similar suicide drones during deadly army raids against Palestinian militants in the occupied West Bank.

“We’re glad for this cooperation, it was quite supportive and quite beneficial for defense,” Azerbaijani’s ambassador to Israel, Mukhtar Mammadov told the AP, speaking generally about Israel’s support for the Azerbaijani military. “We’re not hiding it.”

At a crucial moment in early September — as diplomats scrambled to avert an escalation — flight tracking data shows that Azerbaijani cargo planes began to stream into Ovda, a military base in southern Israel with a 3,000-meter-long airstrip, known as the only airport in Israel that handles the export of explosives.

The AP identified at least six flights operated by Azerbaijan’s Silk Way Airlines landing at Ovda airport between Sept. 1 and Sept. 17 from Baku, according to aviation-tracking website FlightRadar24.com. Azerbaijan launched its offensive two days later.

During those six days, the Russian-made Ilyushin Il-76 military transport lingered on Ovda’s tarmac for several hours before departing for either Baku or Ganja, the country’s second-largest city, just north of Nagorno-Karabakh.

In March, an investigation by the Haaretz newspaper said it had counted 92 Azerbaijani military cargo flights to Ovda airport from 2016-2020. Sudden surges of flights coincided with upticks of fighting in Nagorno-Karabkh, it found.

“During the 2020 war, we saw flights every other day and now, again, we see this intensity of flights leading up to the current conflict,” said Akopian, the Armenian ambassador. “It is clear to us what’s happening.”

Israel’s defense ministry declined to comment on the flights. The Azerbaijani ambassador, Mammadov, said he was aware of the reports but declined to comment.

The decision to support an autocratic government against an ethnic and religious minority has fueled a debate in Israel about the country’s permissive arms export policies. Of the top 10 arms manufactures globally, only Israel and Russia lack legal restrictions on weapons exports based on human rights concerns.

“If anyone can identify with (Nagorno-Karabakh) Armenians’ continuing fear of ethnic cleansing it is the Jewish people,” said Avidan Freedman, founder of the Israeli advocacy group Yanshoof, which seeks to stop Israeli arm sales to human rights violators. “We’re not interested in becoming accomplices.”

Erdogan pointedly flew into Azerbaijan’s autonomous Nakhchivan exclave, a strip of territory nestled between Armenia, Iran and Turkey that Ankara and Baku want to link up with rump Azerbaijan by carving out a land corridor that would run through southern Armenia.

Aliyev in 2021 threatened to create such a corridor – that would create a contiguous land bridge between close allies Turkey and Azerbaijan and deprive Armenia of a land border with Iran – “whether Armenia likes it or not.”

The symbolic choice of location for Monday’s talks, less than a week after Azerbaijani forces swept into Nagorno-Karabakh to retake control of the breakaway region, is likely to worry the authorities in Armenia, who have in the past rejected such a land corridor while being theoretically open to restoring severed road and rail links.

At a joint news conference at which neither man took any questions, President Aliyev lamented that Soviet-era authorities had deemed part of what he said should have been territory belonging to the Azerbaijani Soviet republic as land belonging to the Armenian Soviet republic.

“The land link between the main part of Azerbaijan and Nakhchivan (the exclave) was thus cut off,” complained Aliyev.

An influential telegram channel linked to Karabakh Armenians called “Re:public of Artsakh” said Aliyev’s words looked ominous.

“The new target of Azerbaijan and Turkey is Syunik (a province in southern Armenia through which such a corridor would pass). They are already openly declaring it. Active preparations for war are underway,” it said.

Erdogan and Aliyev were due to inspect a newly-modernised military facility in Nakhchivan and to attend a ground-breaking ceremony for a new gas pipeline from Turkey.

Russia, which has military facilities in Armenia and a defence pact with Yerevan, is busy prosecuting its own war in Ukraine. It is at odds with Armenia’s current prime minister who it deems to be too pro-Western and is keen to further cultivate ties with Baku and Ankara.

Erdogan told the U.N. General Assembly on Tuesday last week, the day that Azerbaijan began its military operation to retake control of Karabakh, that there was what he called “an historic opportunity to build peace” in the South Caucasus region.

“(But) Armenia is not making the most of this historical chance,” Erdogan complained.

“We expect a comprehensive peace agreement between the two countries (Azerbaijan and Armenia) as soon as possible and for promises to be quickly fulfilled, especially on the opening of the Zangezur (land) corridor.”

That was a reference to the terms of a 2020 Russian-brokered ceasefire agreement that ended a 44-day war between Azerbaijan and Armenia that spoke of unblocking economic and transport connections between western Azerbaijan and Nakhchivan, a clause which Baku and Yerevan have since interpreted differently.

Karabakh Armenian authorities accused Azerbaijan of violating a ceasefire agreed on Wednesday after a lightning Azerbaijani offensive forced the separatists to agree to disarm.

Baku’s defence ministry said the allegation that its forces had broken the ceasefire was “completely false”. Two sources in Karabakh’s main city told Reuters they had heard heavy gunfire on Thursday morning, but it was not clear who was firing.

The shooting and the conflicting narratives highlighted the potential for further bloodshed despite a deal agreed 24 hours earlier that Azerbaijan said had restored its sovereignty over Karabakh after 35 years of conflict.

“We have an agreement on the cessation of military action but we await a final agreement – talks are going on,” David Babayan, an adviser to Nagorno-Karabakh’s breakaway ethnic Armenian leader Samvel Shahramanyan, told Reuters.

Asked about giving up weapons, Babayan said his people could not be left to die, so security guarantees were needed first.

“A whole host of questions still needs to be resolved,” he said. “At any moment they could destroy us, engage in genocide against us.”

Azerbaijan said it had agreed to a request to provide fuel and humanitarian aid to Karabakh, after imposing a de facto blockade for the past nine months.

The talks took place in the Azerbaijani city of Yevlakh between Azerbaijan and representatives of the Republic of Artsakh, as the Karabakh Armenians call themselves.

Azerbaijan, a mostly Muslim nation, has denied accusations of ethnic cleansing and says it wants a smooth “reintegration” of the region’s ethnic Armenian, Christian population.

President Ilham Aliyev said on Wednesday the Armenians would enjoy full educational, cultural and religious rights, but wrapped his message in harsh nationalist rhetoric.

All ethnic groups and faiths would be united as “one fist – for Azerbaijan, for dignity, for the Motherland”, he said on state television.

‘Criminal Junta’

Karabakh is internationally recognised as part of Azerbaijan but has enjoyed de facto independence since breaking away in a war in the 1990s as the Soviet Union collapsed.

Restoring control has been a cherished dream for Aliyev, who launched a lightning military operation on Tuesday that quickly broke through Karabakh Armenian lines.

The Karabakh authorities said at least 200 people had been killed on their side. Aliyev said some Azerbaijanis had died as “martyrs” and other soldiers had been wounded, without specifying how many.

Davit Melkumyan, deputy of the National Assembly of the Nagorno-Karabakh, arrives in the Armenian delegation for talks after the breakaway region was forced into a ceasefire, in the town of Yevlakh, Azerbaijan

In his speech to the nation, Aliyev focused his anger on Karabakh’s leadership: “After the surrender of the criminal junta, this source of tension, this den of poison, has already been consigned to history.”

Defeat is a bitter pill for the separatists and for Armenia, which helped its kin in the enclave to maintain their autonomy and fought two wars with Azerbaijan in the space of 30 years.

Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan acknowledged in a speech to mark his country’s independence day that Armenians were enduring “untold physical and psychological suffering”.

But he said that, to guarantee its survival, his country badly needed peace.

Peace Draft

Aliyev said on Wednesday that Armenia’s restraint in not trying to block Baku’s offensive would remove an obstacle to peace between the two Caucasus neighbours. An aide to Aliyev said Baku had given Yerevan a new draft peace agreement, Russia’s RIA news agency reported.

Russia, which has peacekeepers in the region, also did nothing to stand in the way of the Azerbaijani offensive – a source of bitter resentment to many Armenians who looked to Moscow as an ally and protector.

Interfax news agency quoted Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov as saying Moscow believed the question of who Karabakh belongs to had now been resolved, and that this represented substantial movement towards a peace treaty.

In Yerevan, thousands of protesters on Wednesday night denounced their government’s failure to protect Karabakh.

Many demanded the resignation of Pashinyan, who presided over defeat to Azerbaijan in a six-week war in 2020 that paved the way for this week’s loss of Karabakh but nevertheless won re-election several months later.

In Karabakh, many ethnic Armenians have fled their homes in the past three days, some massing at the airport in the main city and others taking shelter with Russian peacekeepers.

On the Armenian side of the border with Azerbaijan, on a remote hillside near the village of Kornidzor, Armenian men in a column of around 20 cars stood waiting for friends and family trapped in Karabakh, should they be allowed to leave.

One man who gave his name as Hayk said he had spent days on the border hoping to find his father, who had been in Karabakh for work when the blockade was imposed last December and had been trapped ever since.

Residents of Stepanakert, the Karabakh capital which Azerbaijan calls Khankendi, said there was no electricity, shops were bare, and people were lighting fires in courtyards to cook whatever food they could find.

“There are a lot of displaced people from the villages, they were just moved to the city and had nowhere to spend the night,” said Gayane Sargsyan, who runs a wellness business in the city.

In a voice message, she told Reuters that rumours were swirling about what would happen next and people were in “chaos and bewilderment”.

Iran had earlier cancelled all flights to Azerbaijan and Armenia until further notice for security reasons.

Armenian separatist forces in Azerbaijan’s breakaway region of Nagorno-Karabakh surrendered and agreed to a ceasefire on Wednesday, 24 hours after Baku began an offensive to restore full control of the territory.

Azerbaijan confirmed a ceasefire deal had been reached.

“The United States stands ready to support the efforts of both parties to conclude a durable and dignified peace agreement,” the State Department said in a statement.

The former Soviet states have fought two wars over the region, recognized as part of Azerbaijan but populated mainly by ethnic Armenians. Azerbaijan in 2020 recaptured chunks of territory lost in a conflict as Soviet rule collapsed in the early 1990s.

On Wednesday, the leaders of the two countries are due to meet at an European Union development meeting in Moldova to be attended by leaders from more than 40 states as well as European institutions.

“We hope that will be a productive step to resolving these issues at the negotiating table and not through violence,” the State Department said on Tuesday.

Peace talks had appeared to be making progress in recent weeks, with Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan acknowledging Azerbaijan’s control over Karabakh.

But Armenia accused Azerbaijan on Monday of threatening to resort to force after Azeri President Ilham Aliyev demanded the dissolution of Karabakh’s “separatist” local government.

The State Department warned against escalations. “Aggressive rhetoric can only perpetuate the violence of the past; constructive dialogue—both public and private—can create peace, opportunity, and hope,” it said.

Tension had been rising despite the peace talks over Azerbaijan’s setting up of a checkpoint last month to the Lachin corridor – the only route linking Armenia with the territory. Border clashes are frequent.

The two leaders met last week in Moscow, where Russian President Vladimir Putin said he believed the two sides were making progress towards clinching a long-term peace deal.

Nagorno-Karabakh is internationally recognised as part of Azerbaijan, but its 120,000 inhabitants are predominantly ethnic Armenians and it broke away from Baku in a war in the early 1990s.

Azerbaijan said it had established a checkpoint on the road leading to Karabakh, a step it said was essential due to what it cast as Armenia’s use of the road to transport weapons.

Azerbaijan “took appropriate measures to establish control at the starting point of the road,” the foreign ministry said.

“Providing border security, as well as ensuring safe traffic on the road, is the prerogative of the government of Azerbaijan, and an essential prerequisite for national security, state sovereignty and the rule of law.”

Armenia said the checkpoint at the Hakari bridge in the Lachin corridor was a gross violation of the 2020 ceasefire agreement which ended a 2020 war. It called on Russia to implement the agreement which states that the Lachin corridor, the only road across Azerbaijan that links Armenia to Nagorno-Karabakh, must be under Russian peacekeepers’ control.

“We call on the Russian Federation to ultimately implement the trilateral statement,” Armenia’s foreign ministry said of the agreement that was brokered by Russian President Vladimir Putin.

The U.S. government said it was “deeply concerned” by Azerbaijan establishing the checkpoint on the only land route to the contested region of Nagorno-Karabakh, saying it undermines efforts toward peace in the region.

The U.S. State Department also said there should be free and open movement of people and commerce on the Lachin corridor, and urged both sides to resume peace talks.

Pictures of the bridge posted on social media by Azeri officials showed one side of it blocked by vehicles and soldiers.

Armenia’s defence ministry said a soldier named Artyom Poghosyan was killed at around 0750 GMT when Azeri forces opened fire on an Armenian position in Sotk, an Armenian village east of Lake Sevan. Azerbaijan denied it killed the soldier.

Azerbaijan then claimed that Armenian soldiers fired on Azeri units at around 1110 GMT in the Lachin district, a claim Armenia denied.

In 2020, Azerbaijan retook territory in and around the enclave after a second war that ended in a Russian-brokered ceasefire upheld by Russian peacekeepers.

Azeri civilians identifying themselves as environmental activists have been facing off since Dec. 12 with Russian peacekeepers on the Lachin corridor.

Armenia says the protesters are government-backed agitators who are effectively blockading Karabakh. Azerbaijan denies blockading the road, saying that some convoys and aid are allowed through.

In recent months Armenia has repeatedly called on Moscow to do more to support the peace and ensure unfettered access between Armenia and Nagorno-Karabakh through the Lachin Corridor.

Azerbaijan said it had become impossible for its athletes to take part in the championships and they had already left Armenia to travel home via Georgia.

Video of the incident showed a man snatching the flag and setting it alight, prompting an angry joint statement by Azerbaijan’s youth and sports ministry and its National Olympic Committee.

They condemned it as a “barbaric act” and as evidence of ethnic hatred and racism, saying Armenia was unfit to ensure the safety of athletes and host international sporting events.

Armenia rejected that criticism, saying the incident had been resolved quickly and without any danger to competitors at the European Weightlifting Championships.

The two countries have had hostile relations since the 1991 collapse of the Soviet Union, of which they were both part. In that time they have fought two major wars over Nagorno-Karabakh, a mountain enclave that is internationally recognised as part of Azerbaijan but is populated mainly by ethnic Armenians. Seven soldiers were killed in fighting within the past week.

Russia’s RIA Novosti news agency quoted a lawyer for the man allegedly involved in the flag incident as saying he had been released without charge.

Six Azerbaijani citizens, according to Baku, were “hired by Iranian secret services to destabilise the situation in the country.”

The Interior Ministry, State Security Service, and Prosecutor-General’s Office together made the announcement of the arrests.

The plan, according to the report, was to “set up a’resistance squad’ aimed at establishing a Shariah state in Azerbaijan through armed unrest and violent overthrow of Azerbaijan’s constitutional order.”

They were accused of “engaging in pro-Iranian propaganda of religious radicalism, carrying out directives from abroad to undermine Azerbaijan’s tradition of tolerance,” according to the accusation.

Azerbaijan claims that they used the proceeds from drug sales to fund the promotion of radicalism.

Days after a shooter assaulted the mission, killing one guard and injuring two more, Azerbaijan suspended the operation of its embassy in Iran in January.

According to Baku, the attack was the work of the secret services in Tehran.