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“There is no contract between Russia and Azerbaijan on the delivery of S-300 air defense systems to this country,” a Rosoboronexport spokesman said.

Russian business daily Vedomosti said earlier on Thursday that Rosoboronexport signed an agreement with the Azerbaijani Defense Ministry on the delivery of two S-300PMU-2 Favorit (SA-20b Gargoyle b) battalions last year.

Quoting the newspaper, the world’s news wires reported the same day that Azerbaijan has purchased anti-aircraft missile systems worth $300 million from Russia. The reports stressed, however, that the S-300 was “unlikely to be of much use in any renewed fighting over Karabakh, since Armenia does not possess the kind of modern strike aircraft or missiles that such a sophisticated system would normally be deployed against.”

Armenia and Azerbaijan waged a bloody war over Nagorno-Karabakh in the early 1990s and still remain in dispute over the region despite signing a ceasefire in 1994.

Internationally mediated talks between Azerbaijan and the Armenian side represented by authorities in Yerevan have not produced a peace agreement yet. Azerbaijan has repeatedly warned it will resort to military force if it fails to achieve a negotiated resolution of the conflict meeting its interests.

Ceasefire violations along the line of contact between Azeri and Karabakh military forces have been more frequent since June this year when negotiations over the latest plan offered by the United States, Russia and France, the principal negotiators, all but collapsed.

Officials in Baku have also repeatedly boasted of their increasing military budget, leading observers to conclude that the nation is on a war path.