Azerbaijan Announced Military Exercises with 15,000 Troops on May 16, Indicating Possible Provocation

According to Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan, Azerbaijan's actions constitute a provocation that could have broader geopolitical objectives. He suggested that the Azerbaijanis may have crossed the Armenian-Azerbaijani border not to address local issues, but to incite military confrontation.

“The following facts support this claim: Azerbaijani military representatives are attempting to justify their presence in the region using evidently falsified maps, trying to assert that this territory belongs to Azerbaijan. As I have already mentioned, the maps established during the Soviet Union unequivocally indicate that Azerbaijan's claims have no basis, something they themselves are aware of.

Secondly, the day the provocations began, Azerbaijan announced extensive military exercises involving 15,000 troops on May 16. Thirdly, as early as the end of April, the President of Azerbaijan openly threatened Armenia's territorial integrity, stating that force would be used to establish a corridor between Azerbaijan and Nakhchivan, which he referred to as the Zangezur corridor,” noted Nikol Pashinyan.