Azerbaijan Protests Polish President’s Visit to Armenia-Azerbaijan Border

On Thursday, the Azerbaijani Foreign Ministry summoned Michał Greczyło, the Polish Chargé d’Affaires in Azerbaijan, to deliver a formal protest regarding the recent visit of Polish President Andrzej Duda to the Armenia-Azerbaijan border.

The ministry expressed concern over President Duda’s visit to the border area near the village of Kerki, which remains under Armenian occupation, describing his actions as aligning with anti-Azerbaijani propaganda spearheaded by the European Union Mission to Armenia (EUMA).

The ministry emphasized that EUMA, intended to promote stability and confidence-building between Azerbaijan and Armenia, has instead been exploited as an anti-Azerbaijani propaganda tool.

“This provocation contradicts Azerbaijan-Poland relations, and it is necessary to refrain from such steps that affect the legitimate security interests of Azerbaijan,” the ministry warned Michał Greczyło.

On Wednesday, President Duda visited the Polish staff at an observation point of EUMA and met with the mission’s contingent. EUMA Head Markus Ritter briefed the Polish president on the current situation and the mission’s activities.

Markus Ritter and his deputy, Marek Kuberski, are from Poland.

On the same day, the Azerbaijani Foreign Ministry criticized Duda’s actions as another demonstration of the anti-Azerbaijani policy of certain EU member countries and European institutions.

The ministry expressed frustration over the participation of the president of a “strategic partner” of Azerbaijan in the unacceptable diplomatic “binocular show” leading to the aggravation of relations between Azerbaijan and Poland.

“Despite the numerous messages sent from Azerbaijani officials to the Presidential Administration and Foreign Ministry of Poland, the Polish side did not refrain from this provocative step. Azerbaijan retains its rights to take due diplomatic measures against this unfriendly action,” the ministry posted on X.

The idea of a European mission was advanced by EU foreign policy chief Josep Borrell. Initially, it was proposed to operate in the border territories of both Armenia and Azerbaijan. However, in an EU-mediated meeting in Prague in October 2022, the two nations agreed to facilitate a civilian EU mission alongside Armenia’s border with Azerbaijan, with Baku rejecting its deployment on Azerbaijani territory and agreeing to cooperate with the mission only as far as it concerned.

“There was an attempt to deploy this mission to the Azerbaijani side [of the border] as well, which was emphatically rejected by us. Therefore, the mission will be stationed on Armenian territory, in the CSTO’s zone of responsibility,” President Ilham Aliyev said shortly after the Prague meeting, adding that the mission would stay in Armenia for at least two months.

However, EUMA was established in February 2023 for a two-year period to monitor and report on the situation in the region.

A significant portion of Azerbaijan’s state border with Armenia, measuring 1,007 kilometers, remained outside the country’s control for nearly 30 years after the Karabakh (Garabagh) and East Zangezur regions fell under illegal Armenian occupation in the early 1990s.

As a result of the 2020 war with Armenia, Azerbaijan reclaimed much of its western and southern borders. Following the war, cartographic complications on the interstate border ensued.

In April, Azerbaijan and Armenia initiated the process of demarcating their border after Armenia’s withdrawal from four Azerbaijani border villages occupied since the early 1990s. The first border markers were installed based on geodetic measurements.

Currently, only 12.7 kilometers of the interstate border have been demarcated. With the peace process at a standstill, there has been no progress in the border demarcation efforts.