French President Emmanuel Macron announced on Monday a “diplomatic initiative” to lift Azerbaijan’s ongoing blockade of the Lachin Corridor, the only road connecting Armenia with the Nagorno-Karabakh enclave.

“I will have the opportunity to discuss this week with the prime minister [σ.σ. της Αρμενίας Νικόλ] Pashinyan and the president [του Αζερμπαϊτζάν] Ilam Aliyev,” Mr Macron said. “We will ask for the full respect of the humanitarian corridor of Lachine and we will take a new diplomatic initiative to this end at the international level to increase the pressure,” the French president added.

The Lachin corridor was initially blocked by Azeris posing as environmental protesters, before Baku installed a checkpoint at the entrance citing security concerns. Since then, Azerbaijan has blocked traffic on the critical axis for months under various pretexts.

Armenia has called for the UN to intervene, a move that has undermined peace talks according to Baku.

In a letter to French elected officials, a copy of which came into the possession of Agence France-Presse on Monday, Azerbaijan’s ambassador to France, Leila Abdulayeva, accuses Yerevan of “deteriorating the security situation in the region by abusively using the Lachin road to transport mines and illegal armed forces in Azeri territory”.

“This is the reason why Azerbaijan installed a checkpoint on its territory, on the road to Lachin,” added the diplomat, adding that “some French elected officials” decided to “accompany a humanitarian convoy for the Armenians of Karabakh,” contributing ‘ this in the “‘demonization’ of Azerbaijan by accusing it of causing a ‘humanitarian disaster’ on the basis of completely non-existent accusations”.

Armenia and Azerbaijan, former Soviet republics of the Caucasus, were involved in two wars, in the 1990s, when the USSR collapsed, and in 2020, over the control of Nagorno-Karabakh, a mountainous enclave inhabited mainly by Armenians but internationally recognized as part of Azerbaijan, although it seceded three decades ago.

After the six-week war in autumn 2020, in which Azerbaijan recaptured territory controlled by Armenia for decades, Baku and Yerevan signed a cease-fire agreement brokered by Moscow.