Russian President Vladimir Putin has held talks with Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan after reports Azerbaijani forces crossed the contact line in Nagorno-Karabakh.
Russian peacekeepers are said to have done nothing to stop what Yerevan says is a major escalation.
Azerbaijan's armed forces are clearly calculating that Moscow is distracted by its disastrous invasion of Ukraine, and weaker than first thought.
I wrote about Baku's gamble and the rapidly escalating conflict from Yerevan today.
And the US has weighed in on the situation. Appears Western nations are prepared to condemn, but if Russian forces continue to sit in their bases, it's unlikely to make much of a difference.
Just across these mountains is the border with Azerbaijan & the disputed region of Nagorno-Karabakh, where there are warnings a full-scale war could break out.
I'm going to try and explain what both sides say is going on. THREAD 🧵
Yesterday, Russian peacekeepers, who have been tasked with holding the contact line under the terms of a 2020 ceasefire, reported Azerbaijani troops had carried out drone strikes killing three AM servicemen, and begun pushing into Armenian-held villages.
Hackers have got hold of orders from Russia's most popular delivery service and plotted it out on a map.
Interestingly, hundreds of separate people have ordered food to near the Kremlin staff entrance. Many have ordered hundreds or thousands of dollars of takeout in 6 months.
If Putin's inner circle is chowing down on takeaways, their aides seem to be ordering it for them, with an absence of big names in the data.
For example, Andrei here, graduated from a prestigious Moscow university in 2014 - just the type to be getting a plum job meeting couriers
Likewise with the State Duma - Russia's national parliament - just around the corner...
The Russian government has just sent out a mass email informing citizens it will block Instagram by 0:00am on Monday.
It accuses the site of supporting “genocide” & says it is breaking the Geneva Conventions designed as a response to the Nazis. Totally disconnected from reality
“Because the management of the social network Instagram, contrary to international law, for the first time in history and only with regard to Russians allowed calls to violence, the Prosecutor General's Office decided to ban this social network in Russia”
“Calls to violence against people on the basis of their nationality are part of the crime described as "genocide," which is prohibited by the 1948 UN Conventions… drawn up following consideration of all the evidence of Nazi criminals gathered at the Nuremberg Tribunal”
Worth caveating that Kommersant, which is one of Russia's best and most reputable broadsheets, cites anonymous foreign ministry sources here. The British embassy has apparently not commented.
For anyone unfamiliar with the geography of southern Russia, this would be a little bit like denying British sovereignty over Norwich, if Norwich had better weather and more of an association with criminal gangs (in the case of Rostov).