Azerbaijan Holds New Large-Scale War Games After Armed Incursion Into Armenia
On May 16 Azerbaijan kicked off large-scale war games after its troops encroached on Armenian territory almost a week ago. This is the third series of Azerbaijani war games since last August, the first having preceded the Azerbaijani-Turkish attack on Nagorno-Karabakh by only a month and a half.
Only two months ago Azerbaijan conducted another series of war games with 10,000 troops, 100 tanks and other armored vehicles, rocket and artillery installations, multiple rocket systems, mortars and thirty military aircraft and drones.
The current ones, then, are the most extensive since Azerbaijan attacked Nagorno-Karabakh last September in what developed into a lopsided 44-day war. Preceding the war Azerbaijan and Turkey – the two nations refer to themselves as “one nation, two states” – held massive war games throughout Azerbaijan, on both sides of Armenia (Nakhchivan and the main body of Azerbaijan),