Karabakh precedent: how moscow lost territory it had held for thirty years

On June 19, Ukrainian drones struck a railway bridge in Crimea—the latest in a series of attacks on crossings connecting the peninsula to the mainland. These strikes on logistics are intended to cut off the russian forces’ supply of fuel, ammunition, and reinforcements; Ukrainian Defense Minister Mykhailo Fedorov summed up the goal succinctly: “Crimea will become an island.” But behind the military tactics lies a political question: Is it possible to reclaim territory that russia has held for years as a strategic foothold? In more than thirty years of such footholds, there has been only one precedent.

Telegraf reports on this.

Moscow has been establishing such footholds in the post-Soviet space since the early 1990s: Transnistria—since 1992, Abkhazia and South Ossetia—after the 2008 war, Crimea and part of the Donbas—since 2014, and Nagorno-Karabakh—since 1991, where “peacekeepers” cemented russia’s presence following the Second Nagorno-Karabakh War. The pattern is the same everywhere: a protracted conflict that russia stokes and exploits, local officials loyal to the kremlin, and its own military contingent as a safety net. In over thirty years, this system has failed only once—in September 2023, when Azerbaijan reclaimed Karabakh in a single day, depriving moscow of its foothold.

In Karabakh, russia had cast itself as an indispensable arbiter, and until then, it had seemed unassailable. The trilateral agreement of November 2020 granted the kremlin the right to maintain up to two thousand troops in the region, and key posts in the unrecognized “NKR” were held by individuals directly linked to moscow. In 2022, “Putin’s wallet,” Ruben Vardanyan—a billionaire who previously headed “Troika Dialog”—became its “prime minister”; through which, according to an OCCRP investigation, undisclosed payments had been funneled for years to figures close to the kremlin. The appointment sent a clear message: moscow isn’t leaving—it’s taking root.

The denouement came quickly. On September 19–20, 2023, the Azerbaijani army broke through the separatist defenses in a single day; the “NKR” announced its self-dissolution, and its leadership, along with Vardanyan, found themselves in a Baku detention center. Russian peacekeepers did not intervene and withdrew early in June 2024. Russia had weakened so much and lost so much leverage that even Yerevan, moscow’s longtime ally, began to draw closer to the EU.

There is an important political lesson here for Ukraine. The West is firmly convinced that time works in the occupier’s favor: the longer control lasts, the harder it is to challenge it. Karabakh refutes this logic—thirty years of the status quo did not make foreign control either legitimate or irreversible, and it collapsed in forty-eight hours as soon as the political will and military resources became available. Within this framework, Crimea is not a unique case, but rather another point among russia’s footholds, from Transnistria to South Ossetia. And if the Karabakh foothold proved to be reversible, there is no reason to consider the Crimean one irreversible.