Ivan Kudryavtsev, exclusively for VK
The incident of the Armenian helicopter which was shot down over Azerbaijani territory could seriously aggravate the situation on the frontline and in the whole region. Despite repeated calls made by the Azerbaijani side on the inadmissibility of any flights over the occupied territories of Azerbaijan, in accordance with international decisions and the decision of the International Organization of Civil Aviation and Baku, and warnings about the elimination of violators detected in the airspace, the Armenian Armed Forces attacked the front line of the Azerbaijani defense.
The majority of experts agree that what happened can only be regarded as a provocation. But who needed this provocation and why? To understand the situation, we'll have to establish the chronology of events.
On October 27 a meeting took place between Presidents Ilham Aliyev and Serzh Sargsyan in Paris. At the meeting the statement of one of the OSCE Minsk Group chairmen read that the status quo in Nagorno-Karabakh was unacceptable and that a peace agreement needed to be reached.
The call for a peace agreement is fully supported by the Azerbaijani side, but Yerevan does not have the same opinion.
As a result, 10 days later the most large-scale military maneuvers in the occupied territories began. About 40,000 soldiers, more than 2 thousand artillery systems, over 800 units of armored vehicles took part in them.
It is clear that the military exercises on the occupied territories of Azerbaijan were to challenge Azerbaijan and to demonstrate that Yerevan refused to start working on a peace agreement in the framework of diplomacy. The maneuvers themselves have become a provocation, but they were recognized on the international level only after Armenian helicopters began to fly over Azerbaijani territory.
Yerevan claims that helicopters did not have any ammunition. However, it is hard to determine the presence of ammunition on board, given that helicopters fly high in the sky. Therefore Azerbaijani soldiers were following their rules and the Mi-24 was destroyed using the Igla anti-missile system.
Could the people who had sent Armenian soldiers on such a risky mission know that this was going to happen? Of course they did! Did they know what political consequences it would bring? Definitely. The situation on the frontline is so tense that any provocation can lead to the resumption of hostilities. There wasn't only one incident of provocation: not only military helicopters flying over Azerbaijani territory, but also maneuvers on the occupied territories could be considered provocations.
