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

Paris has increased military cooperation with Yerevan in recent months through contracts and training. Weapons sales include GM200 air surveillance radars made by Thales, while contracts for Mistral missiles made by MBDA are currently being negotiated.

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

“The fact that France is equipping Armenia with lethal and offensive artillery installations and other types of weapons, despite the warning of the Azerbaijani side, is further evidence of France’s provocative activities in the South Caucasus,” the Azerbaijani Defense Ministry said in a statement.

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

“Azerbaijan’s practice of predicting regional escalations at every opportunity is alarming,” the Armenian Foreign Ministry said in a statement. The ministry added that this “proves” that Azerbaijan intends to avoid a peace treaty with Armenia in order to launch new aggression after the UN climate conference COP29 in Baku in November.

Russia has armed both Azerbaijan and Armenia in the past, supplying the 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 expelled from their own countries and Armenian forces seize control of Nagorno-Karabakh.