Author: Emil Lazarian

Russia remains cautious as Azerbaijan’s block of the region’s only gateway drags into its ninth month.

TBILISI-BASED JOURNALIST

As Azerbaijan keeps a chokehold on supplies to Nagorny Karabakh in a months-long blockade driving food and fuel shortages in the Armenian-populated territory, Russia’s reluctance in intervening to unlock the situation has soured relations between Yerevan and Moscow.

Russia has long been Armenia’s security guarantor, but in an interview released on September 3, Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan said that depending solely on Moscow was “a strategic mistake” because it has been unable to deliver. Russian media labelled Pashinyan’s statement as “unacceptable in tone”.

On September 5, Armenia recalled Viktor Biyakov, its ambassador to the Collective Security Organisation Treaty (CSTO), the Russia-led security alliance of post-Soviet countries. He was then appointed ambassador to the Netherlands and experts noted that he was unlikely to be replaced.

In addition, on September 6, Yerevan announced joint military exercises with the US on its territory from September 11 to 20, as part of preparation for participation in international peacekeeping missions.

Stretched in Ukraine, the Kremlin has avoided getting entangled in the blockade of the Lachin corridor. Russian peacekeepers, tasked with enforcing the 2020 ceasefire between Yerevan and Baku, did little to prevent Azerbaijan from setting up checkpoints along Lachin and shutting down traffic of goods. The Azerbaijani side claims Armenia was first to violate the terms of truce and that Baku had to take measures in response. 

Baku’s victory in 2020 in the latest war over the Armenian-populated enclave, which is inside Azerbaijan’s internationally recognised territory, left the region with Lachin as the only link to the outside world: since December 2022, Baku has gradually restricted movement through the road, until it effectively sealed it off mid-June. Trucks with aid and supplies were left stranded on the Armenian side.

Dismissing these reports as exaggerations, Baku claimed that Armenia was using the route to send ammunition into Karabakh and to otherwise sabotage Azerbaijan’s push to enforce its jurisdiction over the enclave. But closing this key passage has led to mounting tensions and reduced the room for dialogue between the sides to the conflict.

“It seems that Baku’s blockade is driven by vindictiveness,” Hans Gutbrod, associate professor at Ilia State University in Tbilisi, told IWPR. “It’s hard to see this as a calculated policy since the more constructive and conciliatory approach would be much more likely to result in a last solution.”

Armenia and Azerbaijan fought two major wars over Karabakh, an Armenian-dominated autonomous region of Azerbaijan during the Soviet era. These conflicts, one from 1988–1994 and another in late 2020,  claimed tens of thousands of lives and displaced hundreds of thousands of people. 

In between these wars there were almost 30 years of chronic exchanges of fire and state-sponsored mutual threats amid futile international efforts to broker peace. 

DECADES-LONG WAR

Home to around 120,000 ethnic Armenians, the region has been de facto independent since a ceasefire was signed in 1994. Armenian troops occupied swathes of surrounding Azerbaijani lands, forming a buffer zone around the region.

In 2020, Azerbaijan reclaimed all of the occupied territories and part of Karabakh itself, and effectively encircled it from all sides. Under a Moscow-brokered armistice, Russian peacekeepers were to guarantee free and safe passage between Karabakh and Armenia through the five kilometre-wide Lachin mountain pass.

In late 2022, however, Baku effectively severed this lifeline. Supplies soon began to dwindle and shops’ shelves began to empty in the region’s main city Stepanakert, Khenkendi in Azerbaijani Aid organisations called for lifting the blockade, warning of a looming humanitarian crisis. Authorities in Karabakh, which Armenians call Artsakh, claim that Azerbaijan’s goal is to starve Armenians out of the region. On August 15, authorities reported the region’s first death from starvation.

Armenia has called for an emergency meeting of a UN Security Council to discuss the plight of its protectorate.

“The people of Karabakh are on the verge of a full-fledged humanitarian catastrophe,” Armenia’s representative to the UN, Mher Margaryan, wrote on August 11.

Azerbaijan has accused Armenia of manipulating international opinion with tales of a humanitarian crisis so as to stall the process of Karabakh’s reintegration into Azerbaijan. Yashar Aliyev, Margaryan’s Azerbaijani counterpart, said that if the situation was that bad Armenia and Karabakh would have agreed to opening up an alternative, Azerbaijan-controlled supply route.

Azerbaijan has been offering to provide essential goods to Karabakh through the Aghdam road, which would link link Karabakh to mainland Azerbaijan.

While the EU backed Baku’s proposal, Karabakh residents refused it as marking the effective legitimation of Azerbaijan’s rule over the region.

“Aghdam road is a road to ethnic cleansing,” said placards held by protesters from Karabakh on July 18, as they barricaded the entry from Aghdam.

Azerbaijani border guards’ treatment of Karabakh citizens at the Lachin checkpoint, most notably the arrest of a 65-year-old Karabakh resident on allegations of committing war crimes 30 years ago, has also hampered building trust between the sides.  

Humanitarian organisations, international observers and diplomats, including EU High Commissioner Josep Borrell, said that the Aghdam road cannot serve as a substitute to Lachin road, and not just because of the mistrust between the warring sides.

“Aghdam road is not an alternative,” Olesya Vartanyan, a South Caucasus analyst with the International Crisis Group, a Brussels-headquartered think-tank, told IWPR. “After you had been using one road for 30 years, get all of your supplies through that road and have an infrastructure set up, you can’t just switch away from it overnight.”    

Convened at the behest of Armenia, UN Security Council members called on August 17 for the reopening of the Lachin corridor. The Russian representative suggested using both Lachin and Aghdam for supplies.

Baku has insisted all along that the Lachin corridor is open, at least to the movement of civilians. In August Azerbaijani television aired reports showing Armenians going through the checkpoint and Baku stated that this disproved the Armenian claims of a blockade.

Reached by IWPR, Karabakh’s de-facto authorities confirmed that there “no free exit or entry to Artsakh”. 

“No goods, supplies and even medication are allowed through,” the de-facto foreign ministry said in a written response to IWPR’s query. “Sometimes Azerbaijan allows the transportation of seriously ill patients to Armenia. Two days ago [in late August] it was possible to arrange the departure of a group of students, who study in higher education institutions of Armenia or other countries. But in general the situation hasn’t changed.”

International pressure has been mounting on Azerbaijan, but Baku remains defiant, at least in its public statements.

“Internationally, the situation is so liquid that it’s no guarantee that international attention alone with be enough to lift the blockade, in whole or part,” said Gutbrod. “The West does have some leverage, but it is also facing multiple crises at the same time.”

https://iwpr.net/global-voices/yerevan-angry-over-moscows-inaction-nagorny-karabakh-blockade-continues

Russia on Friday summoned the Armenian ambassador to protest grievances including comments made by the speaker of the Armenian parliament about Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova, the ministry said in a statement.

The statement also criticised what it said were a number of “unfriendly moves” by Armenia, including planned joint exercises with the U.S. and humanitarian aid shipments to Ukraine.

https://www.devdiscourse.com/article/law-order/2586724-russia-protests-to-armenia-over-comments-by-speaker-of-armenian-parliament

Sept 8 (Reuters) – Russia on Friday summoned the Armenian ambassador for a “harsh” protest about a list of what it termed “unfriendly steps”, the latest sign of strain between Moscow and the small ex-Soviet republic in a region Russia considers its back yard.

In a statement, the Russian Foreign Ministry listed these as Yerevan’s decisions to sign up to the International Criminal Court and to host a military exercise with the United States, as well as a visit to Ukraine by the Armenian prime minister’s wife to deliver humanitarian aid.

The ministry said a “harsh representation” had been made to the ambassador, Vagharshak Harutyunyan, also complaining of “offensive statements” allegedly made by Alen Simonyan, chair of the Armenian National Assembly, about ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova.

Armenia, which hosts a Russian military base and relies almost entirely on Russia for its defence supplies, has complained bitterly in recent months that Russian peacekeepers have failed to end an Azerbaijani blockade of supplies to Nagorno-Karabakh, an ethnic Armenian enclave within Azerbaijan.

It has also openly questioned whether to remain in the Collective Security Treaty Organization (CSTO), a Russia-led military alliance of six former Soviet republics.

Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan said in an interview published on Sunday that Armenia’s policy of relying solely on Russia to guarantee its security was a strategic mistake.

He said Moscow, distracted by its war with Ukraine, had been unable to deliver and was winding down its role in the South Caucasus.

Moscow responded by insisting that it intended to remain the principal guarantor of security in the Caucasus, which also includes Azerbaijan and Georgia.

Armenia and Azerbaijan accused each other on Thursday of moving troops close to their joint border as tensions over the future of the Nagorno-Karabakh enclave rose.

A foreign policy adviser to Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev told Reuters his country was ready to allow Red Cross aid from Armenia into Nagorno-Karabakh if Red Crescent aid from Azerbaijan was let in at the same time.

The ICC issued an arrest warrant in March for Russian President Vladimir Putin, accusing him of war crimes in Ukraine.

The Kremlin has dismissed the idea that Russia’s actions in Ukraine could be war crimes and noted that Russia does not recognise the court.

In her latest appeal to the government — after successfully getting Donald Trump to commute the sentence of Alice Johnson — she’s trying to get the US to use its immense power to ensure there will never be a repeat of the Armenian Genocide.

As followers of history should know, the Armenian people suffered a massacre at the hands of their neighbors in the Ottoman Empire, in present-day Turkey, early in the 20th century. According to a new open letter penned by the Kardashians star and Dr. Eric Esrailian for Rolling Stone, Armenians all over the world are worried it could happen again.

In the piece released on Friday, the reality TV star warns that a land dispute and border blockade occurring with Armenia’s other neighbor, Azerbaijan, could soon lead to more strife and bloodshed.

The blockade centers on the breakaway region of Artsakh. There, per Kim’s letter, “indigenous Christian Armenians” are hemmed in by Azerbaijan and its 99% Muslim population on all sides. These Artsakh residents are being forced to go through checkpoints when going out of their region to Armenia and elsewhere. Plus, with the war between Russia and Ukraine, many countries in that region of West Asia and beyond are relying on Azerbaijan for oil. That economic push is worrying Armenians, as the Azerbaijanis may push the Christian Armenian population out of the region entirely — or worse.

The open letter from the SKIMS founder notes that one ceasefire agreement reached after a 2020 conflict has thus far not been upheld. Further, they demand Biden and other government officials — both in the United States and around the world — cut off foreign aid to Azerbaijan and boycott international events that are scheduled in that country.

Kim and Dr. Esrailian write:

“The collective silence or inaction by individuals, governments, and governmental organizations like the United Nations and European Union has perpetuated the crisis. Every passing day puts more lives in danger. American taxpayer dollars are now facilitating and enabling this behavior by providing foreign aid to an oil-rich nation. Through economic sanctions, cutting off foreign aid to Azerbaijan, boycotting international events in Azerbaijan (such as concerts and sporting events like soccer and Formula 1), and through proceedings in international courts, we can collectively achieve results, but this process has been too slow and time is running out. As citizens, we are appealing to leaders such as President Biden, Secretary of State Blinken, and their colleagues to take a stand immediately. They must pressure Azerbaijan to open the corridor without preconditions.”

Kim and the doctor go on to note they would continue to sound an alarm until action is taken:

“We are just two people. We have been working behind the scenes to support our Armenian brothers and sisters, but this diplomatic approach has not yielded meaningful results. This crisis will clearly not be remedied by individuals, but we will continue to do what we can to use whatever influence we have. We are not politicians or government leaders, and despite our own diplomatic efforts, this humanitarian crisis has persisted with no clear end in sight — except for the potential for ethnic cleansing of the Armenian population. We will continue to use our voices to amplify the truth.”

And they conclude by begging for help so the people of Artsakh may “live in peace” free from fear of genocide:

“The people in Artsakh want to live in peace. Now is the time for true leadership. We need for those who have a meaningful role in these affairs to immediately demand that the Lachin Corridor is opened to stop another genocide. We want to draw more attention to the crisis and appeal to those in our own government who truly care about humanity to intervene. The United States has the ability to mobilize a response. Leaders who are effective and help our people will be remembered for their heroism. Even if well-meaning, the ones who are inert and ineffective will be remembered for allowing a genocide to take place under their watch. The choice is theirs.”

The entire open letter dives into far greater detail about the situation ongoing in Artsakh. You can read the full thing HERE.

[Image via Nicky Nelson/MEGA/WENN]