The Nagorno Karabakh conflict is one of the land disputes which can be traced back to the disintegration of the Eastern Bloc/USSR.
https://www.france24.com/en/20200716-ne ... azerbaijan
Border clashes erupted again early on Thursday between arch-foes Azerbaijan and Armenia, officials in both countries said, following a pause in fighting amid a flare-up over a decades-long territorial dispute.
At least 16 people on both sides have been killed since border clashes erupted on Sunday between the ex-Soviet republics, which have been locked for decades in a conflict over Azerbaijan's separatist region of Nagorno Karabakh.
The territory was seized by ethnic Armenian separatists in a 1990s war that claimed 30,000 lives, though the recent fighting broke out on a northern section of their shared border far from Karabakh.
Azerbaijani forces were "shelling Armenian villages with mortars and howitzers," Armenia's defence ministry spokeswoman Sushan Stepanyan said on Thursday.
The defence ministry in Baku said in a statement that clashes were ongoing in the north after "Armenians shelled Azerbaijani villages with large-calibre weapons."
Armenia has vowed to crush any military offensive.
Al Jazeera extended video report
In the previous series of skirmishes back in 2016 most of the world- including Obama and Putin- were united on the position that the fighting should stop; except for Turkey's Recep Erdoğan who gave unreserved support (at least by words if not actions) to the Azeri military.
The 2016 conflict also saw the first use of suicide drones, with one being used to destroy a bus carrying Armenian volunteers to the frontlines. It eventually ended with Russia acting as a mediator.
NSG, do you think that this conflict will escalate further? Will Erdoğan go full Ottoman? It's especially interesting and concerning that the Armenian Army-proper are involved whereas before it was mainly paramilitaries. Personally I suspect that it'll be similar to 2016; both sides will throw in their punches, claim a kind of victory yet ultimately achieve little after another Russian-brokered cease-fire.