YEREVAN, STEPANAKERT. – The Azerbaijani side regularly violated the ceasefire at Armenia’s border, over the past weekend, but these breaches were not large-scale, Armenian Defense Minister’s Press Secretary Artsrun Hovhannisyan told Armenian News-NEWS.am.     

In Hovhannisyan’s words, security is not boosted at the border, and President Serzh Sargsyan’s order toward increasing the alertness is being carried out.   

Also, the adversary repeatedly violated the ceasefire, at the line of contact between the Karabakh-Azerbaijani armed forces, but these breaches did not claim any lives from the Armenian side, Nagorno-Karabakh Republic Defense Army press service informed Armenian News-NEWS.am.  

To note, Armenia’s President Serzh Sargsyan convened a National Security Council session on August 31—and in connection with the release of Azerbaijani army officer Ramil Safarov, who had killed Armenian officer Gurgen Margaryan with an axe and while he was asleep—and instructed to increase the alertness of the Armed Forces.

Armenian News-NEWS.am reported earlier that Ramil Safarov, a lieutenant in the Azerbaijani military, was extradited on August 31 from Hungary, where he was serving a life sentence—and with no expression of either regret or remorse—for the premeditated axe murder of Armenian lieutenant Gurgen Margaryan, in his sleep, during a NATO Partnership for Peace program in Budapest back in 2004.

As expected, Ramil Safarov’s return to Baku was welcomed, as was his act of murder, by the officials of president Ilham Aliyev’s government and much of Azerbaijani society, and the Azerbaijani president immediately granted him a pardon.

And Armenia’s President Serzh Sargsyan announced on August 31 that Armenia is suspending its diplomatic ties with Hungary.