YEREVAN, Armenia – Tigran has been protesting outside the Russian embassy every day since Azerbaijan launched its offensive in Nagorno-Karabakh. 

On the embassy’s steps, flowers have been laid in memory of the peacekeepers who were killed by Azerbaijani shelling last week. 

"Are these bloody flowers for the occupiers?" reads the poster that Tigran, 19, holds up. When diplomats' cars leave the embassy, he and a small group of protesters shout "Shame!"

He is just one of the thousands of Armenians who have grown disillusioned with Russia — their country’s longtime ally and security guarantor — for failing to prevent Azerbaijani aggression.

Large-scale protests have been taking place in Yerevan since Sept. 19, when Azerbaijan announced a military operation in Nagorno-Karabakh despite the presence of Russian peacekeepers in the region.

Nagorno-Karabakh’s ethnic Armenian separatist leadership announced Thursday that it will dissolve, ending a bitter, three-decade fight for independence in the breakaway region, which is internationally recognized as part of Azerbaijan.

Some protesters accuse Moscow, distracted by its war in Ukraine, of abandoning its commitments to Armenia.

"Until recently, my whole family was pro-Russia. But our opinion has changed," Tigran, who declined to share his last name, told The Moscow Times. "Armenia has always been loyal to Russia. We are the most pro-Russia country. But now we demand from the Russian military that they do their job or get out."

Samvel, a 21-year-old student at the Yerevan University of Theater and Cinema, organized a student strike of more than 100 people originally from Karabakh. 

For several days, alongside thousands of other protesters, he has demanded that the Armenian authorities save his family, who are caught in a humanitarian crisis. 

“Russia promised that it would protect Artsakh,” said Samvel, using the region’s Armenian name. “People believed it and stayed there. But the Russians did not fulfill their promise. They betrayed us! Russia has stabbed us in the back.”

“We won't forget it.”

LONDON – At least 75,500 ethnic Armenian refugees have now fled Nagorno-Karabakh, in the last five days, which is more than half the disputed enclave's population, local authorities said Thursday, as the exodus from the region continues to accelerate.

It is feared the enclave's whole population will likely flee in the coming days, unwilling to remain under Azerbaijan's rule following its successful military offensive last week that defeated the ethnic Armenian separatist authorities and restored Azerbaijan's control after over three decades.

The leader of Nagorno-Karabakh's unrecognized Armenian state, the Republic of Artsakh, on Thursday announced its dissolution, signing a decree that it will "cease to exist" by Jan. 1, 2024.

De facto President Samvel Shahramanyan signed the decree declaring that "all state institutions" will be dissolved.

A statement describing the decree said based on the ceasefire agreement last week, Azerbaijan would allow the unhindered travel of all residents, including military personnel who laid down their arms. The local population should make their own decisions about the "possibility of staying (or returning)," the statement said.

The decree marks an end to Armenian control over the enclave, which is internationally recognized as part of Azerbaijan and has been at the center of one of the world's most intractable conflicts for 35 years.

Ethnic Armenians have lived for centuries in Nagorno-Karabakh. The current conflict dates back to the collapse of the Soviet Union, when Armenian separatists declared the republic and tried to break away from Azerbaijan. Armenia and Azerbaijan waged a bloody war over the enclave that saw hundreds of thousands of Azerbaijani civilians driven from the region and ended with the ethnic Armenians in control of most of Nagorno-Karabakh.

Azerbaijan reopened the conflict in 2020, defeating Armenia and forcing it to distance itself from the Karabakh Armenians. Russia brokered a peace agreement and deployed peacekeepers, who remain in Nagorno-Karabakh.

Last week, after blockading the enclave for nine months, Azerbaijan launched a new offensive that defeated the Karabakh Armenian forces in two days. Since Sunday, tens of thousands of ethnic Armenian civilians have left Nagorno-Karabakh after Azerbaijan opened the road out to Armenia.

Those leaving say they fear life under Azerbaijan will be intolerable and that they will face persecution.

Shortages of food, medicine and fuel have been reported inside the enclave. Those fleeing describe spending 30 hours in traffic jams to leave.

Siranush Sargsyan, a local freelance journalist living in Nagorno-Karabakh, told Reuters it was impossible for ethnic Armenians to remain.

"Of course I'm going to leave, because this place is too small for both of us. If they are here, we have to leave. We don't want to leave, but we don't have [any] other choice," she said.

Azerbaijan charged a former leader of the Karabakh Armenians with terrorism offenses on Thursday after detaining him a day earlier when he tried to leave the enclave with other refugees.

Ruben Vardanyan, a billionaire who made his fortune in Moscow, moved to Nagorno-Karabakh in 2022 and served as the head of its government for several months before stepping down earlier this year. A court in Azerbaijan's capital Baku charged him on Thursday with financing terrorism and creating an illegal armed group, which carries a potential maximum 14-year sentence.

The United States and other Western countries have expressed concern for the ethnic Armenian population. Secretary of State Antony Blinken called Azerbaijan's President Ilham Aliyev this week and urged him to provide international access to the enclave.

https://abcnews.go.com/International/70000-armenians-half-disputed-enclaves-population-now-fled/story?id=103561165

Ten days after Azerbaijan’s 24-hour offensive in Nagorno-Karabakh, a prospective peace agreement promises to resolve a three-decades-long conflict between Azerbaijan and Armenia.

According to Baku, Armenia had occupied the Nagorno-Karabakh region and deployed military forces there even after a 2020 ceasefire, which Azerbaijan perceived as a threat to its security. Now, however, tens of thousands of ethnic Armenians have reportedly fled Nagorno-Karabakh, citing concerns of potential ethnic cleansing, despite Baku’s assertions that they will be treated as equal citizens.

On September 26, senior advisers to Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinian and Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev met in Brussels to prepare for a potential meeting between the leaders in Spain on October 5.

Ahead of those talks, in exclusive interview with The Jerusalem Post, Azerbaijan’s ambassador to Israel, Mukhtar Mammadov, discussed how Baku views the situation.

The Post reached out to local Armenian representatives as well, but did not receive a response by press time.

Ambassador Mammadov: We first need to understand how the situation got to this point and if there was an alternative – and we think there was.

After the [second Nagorno-Karabakh] war in 2020, Azerbaijan, for the second time, was the first to initiate a peace process, despite all the atrocities committed by Armenia against our people.

In the meantime, we were calling on the international community to discuss the situation’s fragility and the need for the international community to support this peace process and ensure that Armenia understood the value of it. We were optimistic, but there were problems on the ground.

The Armenians were smuggling weapons, placing land mines, and creating hysteria around what they called “a blockade of the Lachin road.” But almost every day, the ICRC  (International Committee of the Red Cross) was crossing, and people were crossing. [The Armenians], however, were using it for military purposes. And when we established a checkpoint – which every country has on their borders, Israel has checkpoints – they started this campaign against Azerbaijan, because they wanted to use the road for military purposes.

One of the severe triggers [of the recent escalation] was the land mines. Over 300 land mines exploded in Azerbaijani territory, and over 60 civilians, military and police were killed. Others were wounded, mostly on their hands or feet.

On 19 September, in the early morning, several mines exploded where people were crossing, and civilians and police died or were wounded.

As a result of our counter-terror operation, we discovered how much ammunition, weapons, tanks and explosives were stored in Karabakh, in houses, farms and civilian facilities.

The operation was less than 24 hours. Its purpose was to ensure that the 10,000 foreign troops on Azerbaijan soil, whom we hadn’t invited there, would leave. No country would accept a single uninvited foreign soldier. They were Armenian soldiers who stayed in the area after 2020, or that had been smuggled in since. Now, they are leaving. We opened the corridor for them to go back to Armenia. We have not persecuted them. Those who leave their arms are fine; they can return wherever they came from.

Azerbaijan now has complete control of the enclave after more than three decades. What will the policy be for the people living there now?

Starting the process of reintegration is a necessary process. We invited Armenian representatives to Baku to begin the process, but unfortunately, that invitation was declined.

Azerbaijan has always been a diverse country. We have many nationalities: Jewish, Russian, Georgia, Kurds and others, and they all have rights under the constitution. Ten ethnic groups learn their language at school. It was declared by the president last week that we see Armenians [who live in Karabkah] as our citizens.

There are lots of videos of people fleeing. Will they be able to leave their homes if they choose to? If not, what happens to the property?

The thing is, those you call fleeing, more of them are soldiers or military groups that have nothing to do with the region. We are open to talking to those Karabakh residents who have lived there forever and are not outsiders. They don’t have IDs and documents; Azerbaijan is not forcing anyone to leave its territory; we declared anyone who wants to stay is free to do so, and we won’t prosecute.

At the same time, video footage shows police and military helping injured and older adults. We have nothing against these people; they are leaving due to three decades of propaganda [against Azerbaijan].

Some people were born after the conflict and have not interacted with Azerbaijanis. The elders, many of them, speak the Azerbaijani language. But the youngsters were raised under this propaganda that we are evil. A lot has to be done to change it, and this is one of our focuses.

We lost 30,000 people in the 1990s [during the first war between the two countries] and 3,000 in the recent [2020] war. People have pain and sorrow. We understand the value of moving on to the next stage. It won’t be easy, but we have to start.

We don’t compare; every conflict, process, and war has different contexts. I would refrain from comparing. We never compare our conflict with Armenia with any dispute in the Middle East. We look at how various conflicts are solved and what initiatives were taken that could be relevant for us.

On the other hand, we had seen that before 19 September, the government of Armenia and Armenian representatives compared what was happening to them and the Holocaust. Azerbaijan was far from the Holocaust [in Europe], but we were one of the safe havens for European Jews. We saved the lives of several thousands of Jews. The Holocaust was one of the greatest tragedies of humankind. Many Jews still have pain and links to it and do not see it right to use this comparison on social media.

We have looked at Israel for its multiculturalism. Like Azerbaijan, Israel has built an environment where [citizens can celebrate] Ramadan, Passover and Easter simultaneously, and people can express their faith freely. As the first Azerbaijan ambassador to Israel, it has been important for me to learn a lot about this society and see what my country can learn.

This is a corridor connecting mainland Azerbaijan to its exclave of Naxcivan. The 2020 cease-fire agreement included a commitment to open transportation and communication lines. There have been several meetings with Armenia and Russia; so far, they have refused.

We don’t have territorial claims. We only ask for access to a railway and access to this strip [of land] to go to Naxcivan, because Azerbaijanis have been for 30 years unable to cross that strip, so they had to fly or take buses through Iranian territory. So, we asked them to open that corridor. Also, it would be commercially helpful for the Armenian side.

I want to stress that we don’t have any issues with civilians on the ground. We are sending humanitarian assistance, not for show, but because we see them as our citizens. As for ethnic cleansing, Azerbaijanis faced ethnic cleansing in the 1990s, when more than a million people were forced from their homes. We would never do it to any country or nation. The acts on the ground are the opposite of ethnic cleansing. The [Armenians] are free to stay.

The self-declared republic of Nagorno-Karabakh will cease to exist on New Year’s Day 2024, its ethnic Armenian officials announced on Thursday. The former autonomous region broke away from Azerbaijan after the collapse of the Soviet Union, but was not recognised even by Armenia, which backed it. All its institutions will now be dissolved.

The truth is that it is already vanishing. A place is its people, and more than half the population of the enclave has fled to Armenia since last week’s 24-hour offensive by Azerbaijan to reclaim full control. As of Thursday morning, 68,000 of the 120,000 ethnic Armenians living there had left. Many more will follow. Armenia, a country of only 3 million, must be supported to integrate this number of refugees.

While Baku insists that ethnic Armenians are choosing to leave, and that they have nothing to fear, Thomas de Waal, an expert on the Caucasus at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, observed: “That is not how bitterly contested ethnic conflicts are fought, when armed groups are sent into civilian areas.” Armenia’s prime minister, Nikol Pashinyan, has called it “a direct act of ethnic cleansing”.

What is clear is that few are willing to take the risk of staying. The context is a months-long blockade, which left residents without food or medicines; the warnings from Ilham Aliyev, the autocratic president of Azerbaijan, to “bend your necks”; last week’s military offensive, during which civilians, including children, were killed; and claims of abuses by Azerbaijan’s troops. Further back lies the shadow of the Armenian genocide of 1915, and more recently a history of ethnic cleansing on both sides in the 1990s conflict, in which Azerbaijanis suffered especially heavily. In the brief but vicious 2020 war, Azerbaijan reclaimed large swathes of territory, allowing Azerbaijanis who had left to return home. It also led to crimes including the decapitation of Armenian civilians.

Azerbaijan’s words also carry little weight right now. It launched its operation despite assuring foreign governments that it would refrain from force and in the face of clear warnings from the US and others that they would not countenance ethnic cleansing or other atrocities against the Armenian population of Nagorno-Karabakh. Russia, Armenia’s treaty ally, brokered the previous ceasefire in 2020 and sent in a peacekeeping force, but is preoccupied with its invasion of Ukraine and is displeased with Armenia’s overtures to the west, including a recent joint military drill with the US. It has also been improving its ties to Azerbaijan. Turkey’s increasingly open support also emboldened Baku.

The US and others are rightly pressing for access for a UN monitoring mission. If Baku is doing nothing wrong, it should have nothing to hide. But given the speed of events, Washington, the EU and European governments must also insist that there will be accountability for what is now happening, including via the European court of human rights. European leaders appear genuinely shocked at the actions of Azerbaijan, with whom they had enjoyed warming relations. They should act accordingly.

This is not just about addressing the current crisis, but staving off future violence. There is concern about Azerbaijan’s desire to establish a corridor to Nakhchivan, which is territorially separated from the rest of the country, and President Aliyev’s recent talk of “western Azerbaijan”, in reference to Armenian territory. What happens now is essential not only for the ethnic Armenians who remain in Nagorno-Karabakh, but for others in the region.

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2023/sep/28/the-guardian-view-on-nagorno-karabakhs-exodus-many-have-fled-but-protection-is-still-needed

LONDON, Sept 28 (Reuters) – Azerbaijan does not want a mass exodus of ethnic Armenians from Nagorno-Karabakh and is not encouraging anyone to leave the "liberated" region, Elin Suleymanov, Azerbaijan's ambassador to Britain, said on Thursday.

In an interview with Reuters, Suleymanov said Azerbaijan, which took back control of Karabakh last week in a military operation, had not yet had a chance to prove what he said was its genuine commitment to provide secure and better living conditions for those ethnic Armenians who choose to stay.

Some 70,500 people had crossed from Karabakh into Armenia by early Thursday afternoon, Russia's RIA news agency reported, out of an estimated population of 120,000. Earlier, Ethnic Armenian authorities in Karabakh said they were dissolving the breakaway statelet they had defended against Azerbaijan for three decades.

Many of those leaving have said they fear persecution and ethnic cleansing at the hands of Azerbaijan. Some critics have said the exodus, which has shown how little trust many Armenians have in Azerbaijani promises, is what Baku wants as it will make it easier to resettle the area with Azerbaijanis.

Suleymanov, who issued a call on social media appealing to ethnic Armenians to stay and be part of a multi-ethnic Azerbaijan, said he understood why many civilians were frightened, but that those who chose to stay would benefit from planned rebuilding and infrastructure projects.

"What should Azerbaijan do? We cannot keep them by force, we don't want to keep anyone by force, (but) we don't encourage anyone to leave," he said, adding that Azerbaijani authorities had delivered requested medical, fuel and other supplies.

"We would prefer for people at least to be in a position to make a more informed decision on whether they want to stay. So far, Azerbaijan has not had any chance to prove anything because the time was very short."

Karabakh Armenians will enjoy the same rights and protections as other citizens of Azerbaijan, he said. Karabakh is internationally recognised as part of Azerbaijan.

He rejected Armenian fears that Azerbaijan would now proceed to destroy Armenian churches and monasteries in Karabakh, saying Baku had "no reason" to destroy historic monuments.

Baku's use of force to retake Karabakh has fuelled fears among some Armenians that it may also use force to carve out a land corridor via Armenia to link up western Azerbaijan with its autonomous exclave of Nakhchivan, a strip of territory nestled between Armenia, Iran and Turkey.

Suleymanov said the idea was to re-open transport corridors and make the wider region more prosperous and that he hoped a road and rail corridor could be agreed on via negotiation.

"Nobody is going to open anything by force," he said. "That defeats the purpose. Nobody is going to put troops there, we're not going to invade them (Armenia)."