Azeris killed an Armenian soldier before the presidents’ meeting

The upcoming meeting of the Armenian and Azerbaijani presidents in Russia has been marred by a breach of ceasefire on the line of contact between the Azerbaijani and Karabakhi armed forces that has left one soldier killed.

According to a release by the Defense Ministry of the Artsakh Republic (Nagorno Karabakh), Harut Ashot Grigoryan, 20, a temporary military soldier, was killed by Azerbaijani armed forces at 4:45 p.m. on October 26.

It comes just a day before the October 27 meeting between Serzh Sargsyan and Ilham Aliyev in Astrakhan, Russia, initiated by their Russian counterpart Dmitry Medvedev.

Interestingly, such incidents on the line of contact become more frequent especially before and after any important meeting between the top officials of the two countries.

The Azerbaijani armed forces initiated sabotage on the contact line on June 18 just hours after the similar trilateral meeting held in Saint Petersburg that left 4 Armenian killed and as much wounded.It should be also noted that the mediators have made many statements on removing the snipers from the contact line, which the Armenian side approved and the Azerbaijani side refused. The last such proposal was made by the UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon, in the frameworks of the UN General Assembly session on the meeting with the RA Foreign Minister Edward Nalbandian, to which the Armenian side responded positively, while the Azerbaijani side in the face of the spokesman of the Defense Ministry of that country Sabiroghlu, responded that the withdrawal of the snipers from the contact line won’t promote the conflict resolution.