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Azerbaijan has stepped up its campaign against the EU Mission in Armenia (EUMA) recently, opposition lawmaker Tigran Abrahamyan has warned.

In a Facebook post on Friday, he pointed to Azerbaijani media reports criticizing or insulting the mission, as well as low-quality photos of EU monitoring taken by Azerbaijani border surveillance systems circulating on Azeri Telegram channels with derisive comments.

“Obviously, without the approval of the authorities, the videos and photos possessed by the Azerbaijani Defense Ministry would not have made it to the media,” Abrahamyan wrote.

“Azerbaijan’s campaign aimed at the withdrawal of the EU monitoring mission from Armenia has two objectives:

1. Azerbaijan is thus responding to the increasingly toughening rhetoric of senior European officials and some EU member states, as Baku’s behavior shows its utterly contemptuous stance;

2. Azerbaijan seeks to reuse its tactics on the border, which includes occasional escalations.

“As a rule, the escalations were either used as a means of pressure to get concessions during negotiations, or they were preparations for some military action,” the deputy stated.