The establishment of a checkpoint on the Hakari bridge by Azerbaijan is another blow to the tripartite document of November 9, 2020, and Azerbaijan is advancing its policy of Armenian ethnic cleansing of Artsakh. Artsakh (Nagorno-Karabakh) Foreign Minister Sergey Ghazaryan said this in an interview on Armenian television.

"With the installation of this checkpoint, the perception of the security environment is changing, and Azerbaijan has adopted this policy for a long time. By putting forward various baseless, false accusations, it is trying to resort to such provocations," he said.

According to Ghazaryan, first of all, under the trilateral statement of November 9, 2020, the Azerbaijani side was to guarantee that the connection between Nagorno-Karabakh and Armenia will be ensured, and people, vehicles, and cargo shall pass safely on both sides.

"Now they are putting forward new demands. At this moment they will probably try to inspect trucks, pretending that they are inspecting that there are no weapons. In the next phase, they will already push forward that they are inspecting people, their personal belongings, etc. I must note that this point was the most important element of the [aforesaid trilateral] document, and most of the Artsakh residents displaced in 2020 returned, taking into account that those guarantees exist, including from Russia," he said.

The Karabakh FM said that the people of Artsakh have returned to Artsakh after seeing that a Russian peacekeeping contingent was deployed there, but now they find themselves in hostage status.

"Now we see that Azerbaijan is moving forward by pushing back the red lines of the [Russian] peacekeepers, and we see that representatives of various circles from the Russian side are saying that their attention is focused on another direction [i.e., Ukraine], and the Azerbaijani side is making very good use of that. Now we are trying to find out whether there is an end line, border line or ‘cup of patience’ that the Russian side has in this regard," he added.

And when asked if this is also a red line for the authorities of Artsakh, its FM said that yes, and they have been drawing conclusions in all directions for a long time, but in this case they expect concrete steps from the Russian peacekeeping contingent in Artsakh.