Wednesday, October 7 2020 20:42

ArmInfo. "Baku's statements about the shelling of the pipeline can be regarded as a call to Turkey to directly intervene in the Karabakh conflict," Semyon Baghdasarov, an expert on the problems of the Middle East and Central Asia, a lawmaker of the State Duma of the 5th convocation, told VZGLYAD newspaper. Thus he commented on the message of the Prosecutor General's Office of  Azerbaijan that Armenia allegedly launched missile strikes on the  Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan oil pipeline.

"The fact is that the pipeline, designed to transport Caspian oil  from Baku, goes to the Turkish port of Ceyhan through Tbilisi and is  of strategic importance not only for the Azerbaijani economy, but  also for the Turkish economy," said the director of the Center for  the Study of the Middle East and Central Asia Colonel  Semyon  Baghdasarov.

"Therefore, Baku's statements about the alleged shelling of the  pipeline can be regarded as a call to Turkey to directly intervene in  the Karabakh conflict. That is, not at the level of advisers, pilots  and drone operators, but at a more serious level, '' the interlocutor  explained.  According to him, "it is quite possible that this is an  act of information war." "It's not without reason that Turkish  Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu said at a meeting with Azerbaijani  President Ilham Aliyev the day before that Ankara would provide any  assistance to Baku. I think this is an informational reason for some  actions, "Baghdasarov suggested.

To recall, on Tuesday evening Azerbaijan accused Armenia of missile  strikes on the oil pipeline.  Azerbaijan stressed that "the oil  pipeline occupies a special place in the energy security of Europe,  it is the largest strategic project in the region."

At the same time, Ibrahim Ahmadov, deputy head of the public  relations and events department of the State Oil Company of  Azerbaijan (SOCAR), said that the Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan pipeline  continues to work in the same mode. Later, the press secretary of the  President of Nagorno-Karabakh Vahram Poghosyan denied Azerbaijan's  reports of the alleged shelling of the Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan oil  pipeline. He stressed that the Karabakh army is not targeting  non-military targets. According to him, this is false information,  with which Azerbaijan is trying to mislead the international  community.

The reports of Baku were also denied by the Spokesperson of the  Armenian Defense Minister Shushan Stepanyan. "We have repeatedly  stated that we are not targeting the oil and gas infrastructure, but  regardless of location, all military facilities and targets from  which fire will be fired in the direction of Artsakh  (Nagorno-Karabakh) will be destroyed," she said.

To recall, the total length of the pipeline is 1,768 km, of which 443  km runs through the territory of Azerbaijan, 249 km - Georgia, 1,076  km - Turkey. The volume of pumped oil is 1.2 million barrels per day.