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Armenian opposition MP Tigran Abrahamyan has reacted to Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov’s claims that there would be no checkpoints on the Lachin Corridor despite Azerbaijan’s insistence on such a mechanism on the sole road linking Artsakh to Armenia.

Visiting Baku, Lavrov said traffic through the Lachin Corridor must be regulated in conformity with the 9 November 2020 Armenian-Azerbaijani agreement that placed it under the control of Russian peacekeepers in Nagorno-Karabakh.

“It calls for the free movement of solely civilian and humanitarian cargo and civilians,” Lavrov said after talks with his Azerbaijani counterpart Jeyhun Bayramov on Tuesday. “In our contacts, we are trying to achieve that first and foremost through the peacekeeping contingent. The setup of any checkpoint there is not envisaged.”

In a social media post on Wednesday, Abrahamyan, the secretary of the opposition Pativ Unem faction, called attention to Azerbaijan’s multiple actions running counter to the November 9 statement, including the disruptions of gas and power supplies to Artsakh, Azerbaijan’s seizure of the Artsakh village of Parukh and advances towards the Karaglukh heights in April 2022, as well as its attacks on several other strategic heights in August last year, inflicting both human and territorial losses on Artsakh.

“Azerbaijan's implementation of the 9 November trilateral statement is highly selective, and there has been no trust in Baku's compliance with the terms of the document for a long time,” the deputy wrote.

“Thus, there are no guarantees that the issue of setting up a checkpoint at the corridor will be finally removed from the agenda, especially when the Azerbaijani president continues to insist on it, using different wording,” Abrahamyan stated.