According to inside information in the Kremlin, Moscow will not sell “Bal” missile systems to Azerbaijan. This information was first made public through the Russian daily Komersant on 05 December. One of the reasons for the change in policy appears to be that the missile systems have the potential to  shift theContinue Reading

Source: INGILIZIAN, MASIS, “Azerbaijan Pushes into Nakhichevan Borderlands”, Bellingcat, 08 NOV 2018 *all opinions expressed are those of the original author and do not necessarily reflect the opinions or stance of Nagorno Karabakh Observer.    Recent satellite imagery from Planet Labs shows ongoing engineering works by the Azerbaijani armed forces on theContinue Reading

On 06 November 2018, official sources within the Azeri government announced what is the be the start of an assembly line producing the new HP machine gun. The  latter was first introduced in trials around 2013, and almost five years later a decision was adopted to start mass production. The machineContinue Reading

  According to open sources, news has emerged of a death  in the  Azeri Armed Forces. The death occurred back in July of this year while a second incident took place at the beginning of  September 2018. On 22 July 2018,  Ferid Shabanov was killed by Armenian fire at aContinue Reading

The days of September started with losses of servicemen in both Armenia and Azerbaijan. On 03 September 2018, a member of Azerbaijan’s border guards, Elennur Suleymanov (born 1994),  was accidentally killed by a Georgian lorry driver at the Georgia-Azerbaijan border post between Şıxlı (Azerbaijan) and Kirach Mughanlu (Georgia) when theContinue Reading

On 19 January 2018, media outlets started publishing the first photos on an Russian arms transfer of BTR-80 armoured personnel carriers and other military equipment to Azerbaijan. On the same day, Azerbaijan’s Defence Ministry published its news brief on the transfer, stating that military equipment has been received and will beContinue Reading

The Foreign Ministers of Armenia and Azerbaijan met in Krakow, Poland on 18 January 2018. The meeting was organised by the OSCE Minsk Group Co-Chairs and was reportedly behind closed doors, although photos of the meeting were made public. What exactly was discussed during the meeting remains unknown, however speculationContinue Reading

A criminal case has been started by Nagorno Karabakh judicial officials against captured Azeri soldier Elnur Huseynzade. The latter was captured by Armenian forces in February of 2017 during a small-scale military operation near the north-western village of Talish. The Karabakh Defence Army reported that the captured was a member of anContinue Reading

The second week of January saw the detention and subsequent deportation of Russian scientist Dmitri Chulkov by Azeri authorities. The incident occurred on 05 January 2018, when Chulkov set off on a hike near the nature preserve surrounding lake Göygöl in western Azerbaijan . According to military police who detainedContinue Reading

On 13 January, a group of religious leaders and Shia community members organised a pro-Iran protest in the midst of the ongoing internal unrest in Iran. The protesters, mainly men, chanted pro-Iran slogans and expressed their support for the theocratic government in Tehran. One protester expressed “Khamenei is not onlyContinue Reading

  A recent investigation by private sources in Azerbaijan reveal that at least 59 Azeri servicemen were killed in the year 2017.  Although information on military deaths remains a state secret, an analysis of social networks and personal interviews revealed that at least 19 of these were killed in combat,Continue Reading

Azerbaijan seeks to develop its own combat unmanned aerial vehicles (UAV) after Israeli company revokes license. Minster of Azeri Defense Industry, Yaver Camalov reportedly briefed reporters on the issue this week. In his words, the new programme is aimed at developing “kamikaze” UAV’s, similar to the Israeli-produced Harop used againstContinue Reading