by Max Parry / December 22nd, 2020
In the final week of September, an Azerbaijani offensive renewed hostilities in the perennial armed conflict and territorial dispute in the South Caucasus between Armenia and its neighbor over the Nagorno-Karabakh (“Mountainous Karabakh”) region. By October, the clashes had escalated past the state border between Azerbaijan and the internationally-unrecognized Republic of Artsakh which suffered heavy shelling from banned Israeli-made cluster bombs by the Azeris. Meanwhile, Armenia retaliated with strikes in Azerbaijan outside of the contested enclave, with civilian casualties reported on both sides in the deadliest resumption of large scale fighting since the Russian-brokered ceasefire in 1994. Following Baku’s victory recapturing the town of Shusha which had been under Artsakh control since 1992, a new armistice was signed by Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev, Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan, and Russian President Vladimir Putin las