Category: 2023

Azerbaijan will follow up the capitulation of Nagorno-Karabakh with an attack on Armenia itself, Tigran Balayan tells Brussels Signal.

The AC Milan club managers are still looking for an investment opportunity to reinforce the attacking area of Stefano Pioli's team. Several players are linked with a potential move to the San Siro as usual. But, today, a new name has been added to the shortlist, reportedly.

According to what is reported by Calciomercato.com, attacking midfielder of Krasnodar Eduard Spertsyan (a team in the Russian league) has caught the attention of many clubs in Italy in recent months. Besides AC Milan, there are Fiorentina, Inter, and Juventus who appreicate the player's profile.

Eduard Spertsyan is 23 years old. He is represented by the CAA Stellar agency who look after the interests of AC Milan's Ruben Loftus-Cheek and Pierre Kalulu. The player's contract runs until the summer of 2026. In 13 matches this season, the Armenian talent has scored 5 goals and provided 3 assists.

By Georgi Derluguian

Following Azerbaijan’s 19 September military offensive that led to the dissolution of the breakaway but unrecognised mainly ethnic Armenian-inhabited entity of Nagorno Karabakh, there had been hopes Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan and Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev would meet again at the European Political Community summit in Granada, Spain. However, on the eve of the 5 October talks, Aliyev pulled out, citing the presence of French President Emmanuel Macron in the multilateral meeting that also included German Chancellor Olaf Scholz and European Council President Charles Michel.

Whether the meeting would take place was anyway in doubt. Although Armenian Security Council Secretary Armen Grigoryan and Azerbaijani Presidential Assistant Hikmet Hajiyev met with the advisors to Macron, Michel, and Scholz on 26 September in Brussels, the European Council only spoke of a ‘possible meeting’ in Granada. Likely swaying Baku at the last minute was the visit to Armenia by French Foreign Minister Catherine Colonna two days beforehand. Not only was she again critical of Azerbaijan but Colonna also announced that France would be ready to supply weapons, albeit of a defensive nature, to Armenia.

Colonna also said that France would seek to introduce a new resolution at the United Nations Security Council calling for an international mission in Karabakh now the region had come totally under Baku’s control and the exodus of almost all of its post-1994 population. Baku was also irked by the rejection by France and Germany to have President Erdogan of Turkiye join them in Granada as a counterbalance to France, which Azerbaijan considers pro-Armenian.

Both Aliyev and Erdogan did not attend the EPC summit with the latter excusing himself because he ‘had a cold.’ Their absence was enough to cast doubts the the EU-facilitated process and hinted that it might now be close to collapse. Russia has been increasingly concerned by what it sees as western interference in the region with the aim of driving it out. Similarly, several steps seen by Moscow as anti-Russian by Pashinyan, including ratifying the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court, has further infuriated the Russian President.

“[…] Azerbaijan does not need such a format. Baku does not see the need to discuss the problems of the region with countries far from the region. Baku believes that these issues can be discussed and resolved in the regional framework,” Azerbaijani media quoted the authorities. Nonetheless, it did at least reassure Brussels that it would still participate in negotiations in the tripartite Aliyev-Pashinyan-Michel format. Now that the issue of Karabakh itself has been essentially resolved, albeit by the use of force, the two outstanding issues arguably concern border demarcation and unblocking all economic and transport connections in the region.

In this context, the issue of restoring communications between Azerbaijan and Nakhchivan through Armenia, or what is referred to by Baku and Ankara as the “Zangezur Corridor,” is key. It remains unclear whether lingering disagreement has now been effectively resolved by Baku’s victory in Karabakh. Last week, three of the unrecognised entity’s de facto presidents – Arkhady Ghukasyan, Bako Sahakyan, and Arayik Harutyunyan – were detained by Baku and transferred to pre-trial detention on multiple charges, including terrorism.

Yerevan and many regional analysts, however, are fearful that Azerbaijan might use force to open the route to its exclave, though on 27 September Turkiye’s Erdogan said that the road and rail link could also pass through Iran. In a telephone call held on the day of the Granada summit, Aliyev also told Charles Michel that Azerbaijan had no territorial claims on Armenia. Indeed, this is not the first time such assurances have been given with Aliyev previously saying that the modalities of the “Zangezur Corridor” would be reciprocal to those on the Lachin Corridor linking Armenia to Karabakh.

And on 4 October, Elchin Amirbeyov, Azerbaijan’s Presidential Representative for Special Assignments, again stressed that Baku recognises that the “Zangezur Corridor” would operate under the sovereignty of Armenia. Instead, the issue concerned Armenia reluctant to abide by the terms of 2020 ceasefire statement which required it to be overseen by Russian border guards. Iran has also said that any changes to borders are unacceptable to Tehran while on 5 October Ali-Akbar Ahmadian, Iran's Supreme National Security Council Secretary, further warned against any “geopolitical changes” by external actors.

Despite Aliyev’s absence, a quadrilateral meeting between Macron, Michel, Scholz, and Pashinyan did take place where the settlement of the Armenia-Azerbaijan conflict was discussed. In a joint statement following the meeting, the four leaders specifically recognised the territorial integrity of Armenia and Azerbaijan, the ‘mass displacement’ of its ethnic Armenian population, and also their right to return with international monitoring in place to ensure ‘due respect for their history, culture, and human rights.’

It also called for greater regional cooperation and the reopening of all borders, including between Armenia and Turkiye, as well as the restoration of regional connectivity ‘with full respect for the sovereignty and jurisdiction of each country as well as on the basis of equality and reciprocity.' Pashinyan was also given assurances at the summit that the European Union supports Armenia and will do everything to deliver on its promise of a multi-billion Euro investment package.

Following the meeting, Charles Michel announced that both Aliyev and Pashinyan agreed to meet in Brussels later this month. Meanwhile, Iran and Azerbaijan started work on the first stage of constructing a possible route to Nakhchivan through its own territory, potentially excluding Armenia from another regional project.

Its scheme is to build a road and rail corridor of 40 miles through the mountains of Armenia in hopes of fulfilling a pan-Turkic dream.

Baku (AFP) – Most ethnic Armenians have fled the breakaway enclave of Nagorno-Karabakh since last month's lightning offensive by Azerbaijan, and some fear that the territory's culture is under threat.

Azerbaijan took control of the mountainous region, considered by Armenia to be its people's ancestral home, in September after a one-day offensive that sparked a mass exodus of the ethnic Armenian population.

It was part of Muslim-majority Azerbaijan since the end of the Russian Empire, but it is dotted with several hundred churches, monasteries and tombstones, some dating back to the 11th century.

Its ethnic Armenian Christian inhabitants attempted to break away after the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991 — making a unilateral declaration of independence that failed to achieve international recognition.

Some of the religious sites have unique features and are carved with armed knights dating back to the Mongol Empire of the 13th and 14th century, said Patrick Donabedian of the Laboratory of Medieval and Modern Archeology in the Mediterranean in France.

Key figures who have lived in Karabakh and left during years of dispute include priests from the Armenian Apostolic Church.

They include the clergy of the Dadivank monastery, which is said to have been founded by Saint Dadi at the birth of Christianity.

Some fear their departure has left the region's Armenian cultural sites vulnerable.

"These sites will suffer the same fate as symbolic Armenian sites elsewhere," predicted Hovhannes Gevorgyan, Karabakh's representative in France.

He pointed to the destruction of Armenian historical sites elsewhere in Azerbaijan and in parts of the Karabakh region that were retaken by Baku in the war between Azerbaijan and Armenia over the territory in 2020.

The Armenian church of Saint Gregory in Baku — listed on the Azerbaijani register of national historic monuments — is currently closed to the public.

Its gates are locked and one of the entrance doors is blocked shut by the terrace of a nearby restaurant, an AFP journalist observed.

In Karabakh itself, the Saint Saviour cathedral in Shusha — a city Azerbaijan sees as its cultural capital — is hidden behind a wall of scaffolding.

Other Armenian monuments languish under tarpaulin.

Since the Azerbaijani offensive in September, "the risks… today take many forms", said Lori Khatchadourian, an archaeologist at Cornell University in the United States.

"There's the risk of damage. There's the risk of outright destruction, the risk of erasing of inscriptions," she told AFP.

Rather than famous monuments, it is historic cemeteries and churches in small villages that are the most under threat, she added.

Khatchadourian is co-founder of Caucasus Heritage Watch, which, she said, used high-resolution satellite imagery to document the fate of the Armenian cultural sites in Karabakh and the Azerbaijani exclave of Nakhchivan.

In Nakhchivan, located near the Iranian border, the group's research shows "the complete destruction of 108 mediaeval and early modern Armenian monasteries, churches and cemeteries between 1997 and 2011".

"This figure represents 98 percent of the Armenian cultural sites we were able to locate," she said.

In the Nakhchivan city of Julfa, formerly Jugha, she said there was a slow-moving methodical process of erosion over a period of 10 years.

This data is impossible to verify from the ground because access to the sites is strictly controlled by Azerbaijani authorities.

Baku has said that mosques and other Islamic sites under Armenian control have been desecrated or damaged.

Armenian heritage could also be threatened, some say, by the fact that some of the 700,000 Azerbaijanis displaced in the 1980s and 1990s from Armenia, Karabakh and surrounding areas could now choose to move into the enclave.

Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev has said repeatedly in recent years that Armenians have no ancestral claim to the region.

Its mosques and churches are Azerbaijanis' historic treasures, he has said.

In December 2021, the International Court of Justice reminded Baku it had a legally binding duty to prevent the vandalism and desecration of Armenian cultural sites — including monuments, cemeteries and places of worship.

Azerbaijan's culture ministry did not immediately respond when contacted by AFP.

Since its lightning military seizure of Karabakh, Baku has pledged to afford equal rights to everyone in the territory, whatever their ethnic, religious or linguistic origins.

But Armenian intangible heritage is also "inevitably" at risk, Gevorgyan said.

Armenian folk dances and songs, other traditions and even the dialects spoken in Karabakh "risk vanishing over time".

"The natural guardians of places whose culture and traditions they have passed on down the generations might, once they have physically left be able to pass them on to the next generation," he said.

"But what happens after that?"

The leaders of Georgia and Azerbaijan have put forward the idea of Georgia acting as mediator and host of peace talks between Armenia and Azerbaijan. 

Armenia has yet to respond.

The proposal comes in the wake of Azerbaijan's refusal to show up for planned talks in Spain because France was to participate as a mediator and Turkey was not. 

Current iterations of Armenia-Azerbaijan peace talks have been underway since early 2021 but made little progress due chiefly to differences over the fate of Nagorno-Karabakh's Armenian population.

Now, Baku's lightning offensive to take back the entire territory on September 19-20 and the resulting exodus of the Armenian population and dissolution of the Nagorno-Karabakh Republic has created a new reality.

On October 8 Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev paid an unannounced visit to Tbilisi and held a joint briefing with Georgian Prime Minister Irakli Garibashvili. 

The two leaders hailed bilateral economic and energy cooperation and mooted the idea of Georgia hosting peace talks between Armenia and Azerbaijan in either bilateral or trilateral format. Garibashvili also reiterated Georgia's recognition of Azerbaijan's territorial integrity (i.e. sovereignty over Nagorno-Karabakh). 

"We are grateful to Azerbaijan, which, in turn, always supports the territorial integrity and sovereignty of Georgia. We have also confirmed that we have great hopes that Azerbaijan and Armenia sign a peace agreement," he said. 

"We have always been impartial here in Georgia and are ready to contribute to this issue today. We want to be a mediator in this matter and are ready to offer any friendly format. Our future should be peaceful and stable, and all three countries of the South Caucasus should address regional issues themselves."

Aliyev welcomed the idea and suggested he would prefer it to the ongoing peace talks formats.

"Several countries and also some international organizations are trying to support the normalization process between Armenia and Azerbaijan today. We welcome that. If it is not lop-sided and biased, of course, we welcome any mediation and assistance. However, in my opinion, taking into account both the historical relations and the geographical factor, the most correct option in this field would certainly be Georgia," Aliyev said. 

"[I]f Armenia agrees, the heads of our relevant authorities can immediately come to Georgia for both bilateral and trilateral meetings."

There have been two tracks of mediation between Armenia and Azerbaijan since Azerbaijan's victory in the 2020 Second Karabakh War which saw it regain most of the territory it lost in the first war in the early 1990s (it regained the rest in its September offensive). One track is overseen by Russia and the other by the EU with help from the U.S. 

After Armenia and Azerbaijan agreed to recognize each other's territorial integrity at an EU-mediated meeting in Prague last October, media in both countries reported the launch of separate talks between Baku and the de facto authorities then governing Nagorno-Karabakh. 

These talks made little progress and took place amid Baku's 9-month blockade of the breakaway region. Eventually, the de facto Karabakh government disbanded itself and several of its former leaders now face charges in Azerbaijani custody.

But there is still a chance for a peace deal between Azerbaijan and Armenia, which did not intervene in Baku's offensive to take over Nagorno-Karabakh. 

The first post-offensive meeting between Aliyev and Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan was to be held in Granada, Spain, on the sidelines of the European Political Community Summit, on October 5. 

But a day before the Granada meeting, Aliyev refused to go, citing the exclusion of Turkey, its closest ally, from would-be multilateral talks, and the inclusion of Armenia's ally France. 

"Due to France's biased actions and militarization policy that seriously undermine regional peace and stability in the South Caucasus and put at risk European Union's overall policy towards the region and regardless of official Baku's insistence, not agreeing to participation of Turkey, as a regional country, in the pentalateral meeting Azerbaijan has decided not to participate in Granada meeting," Hikmat Hajiyev, a senior advisor to Aliyev, wrote on X. 

This isn't the first time Georgia volunteered to host talks between its two neighbors. During the 2020 war, then-Prime Minister Giorgi Gakharia offered to mediate, but the warring sides showed no interest. 

In late 2021, in the course of Armenia-Azerbaijan talks, Georgia refused to participate in a so-called 3+3 format involving the three countries of the South Caucasus plus the three larger powers on the region's periphery, Turkey, Iran, and Russia. Its refusal was based on Moscow's involvement. Georgia has no diplomatic relations with Russia, which according to Georgian law has been occupying the regions of Abkhazia and South Ossetia since 2008.

Assistant Professor in Global Humanities, Simon Fraser University

Azerbaijani forces attacked the breakaway and long-disputed enclave of Nagorno-Karabakh in September 2023. Less than a month later, and the region is now all but deserted.

The declared aim of the attack was to eliminate the last forces of the Armenian-majority self-styled republic. The lightning “anti-terror operation,” as Azerbaijan called it, precipitated the collapse of the breakaway republic. Most importantly — given that it came after a debilitating blockade that lasted for almost nine months — it instilled fear among the Karabakh Armenian population.

Many fled their ancestral homeland.

As an endless convoy of cars transporting desperate refugees filled the winding road to an uncertain future away from their homes, regional entities were lining up to influence the future shape of the South Caucasus region on the border of eastern Europe and west Asia. The conflict between Azerbaijan and Armenia has been unfolding there for decades.

In Azerbaijan, President Ilham Aliyev has been investing heavily in cultivating nationalism and militarism over the past few years to shore up his authority and his regime.

Starting from the second Karabakh war in 2020 until the present, Azerbaijan’s Border Service and Armed Forces used inspirational pop music videos to glorify the government’s military posturing and patriotic films to incite nationalism.

Azerbaijan’s President Ilham Aliyev arrives for a summit in Moldova in June 2023. (AP Photo/Andreea Alexandru)

After Azerbaijan’s 2020 victory effectively cut off Nagorno-Karabakh from Armenia — leaving only one precarious point of access to the outside world, the Russian-policed Lachin corridor — the international community urged a negotiated peace settlement that would ensure Nagorno-Karabakh’s reintegration to Azerbaijan in exchange for local self-government.

But Aliyev’s preference for military action was no surprise, since a self-governed Nagorno-Karabakh would have required conflict resolution that was at odds with his preferred authoritarian and centralized governance approach over the rest of Azerbaijan.

Aliyev’s boldness was enabled by Russia’s and Turkey’s interests. Both are intent on regional peacemaking. This allows them to maintain their dominance in the South Caucasus region and keeps both the European Union and the United States at arm’s length.

Russia and Turkey have developed a model I call “managed competition” in the South Caucasus to ensure their often competing objectives don’t undermine their common goal to exclude states with opposing interests.

They worked together during the 2020 conflict to ensure they were the only powers to have a presence by stationing peacekeeping and monitoring forces in Nagorno-Karabakh and the Lachin corridor, albeit Turkey assumed a lesser and mostly symbolic role. The Turks are intent on doing so now as well.

The “two states, one nation” slogan used by Turkey and Azerbaijan to emphasize the ethnic kinship of their people underlies their strategic partnership, including co-ordination on foreign policy, energy and defence.

Turkey supported Azerbaijan with arms and by training the Azerbaijani Armed Forces in both the 2020 and 2023 conflicts.

Ilham Aliyev and Turkey’s President Recep Tayyip Erdogan pose for photos in the Nagorno-Karabakh region in June 2021. (Turkish Presidency via AP)

Azerbaijan, in turn, has helped Turkey reduce its energy dependence on Russia and Iran by boosting its own gas exports.

Both Russia and Turkey regard military action in Nagorno-Karabakh as an opportunity to open the Zangezur corridor — a land bridge between the Nakhcivan (the only part of Azerbaijan sharing a border with Turkey and largely dependent on it) and the rest of Azerbaijan that will effectively provide a link between the two countries.

An increasingly isolated Russia sees in a friendly Azerbaijan a crucial link to Iran and its Persian Gulf ports and a valuable ally that gives it strategic depth in the South Caucasus.

By sacrificing its traditional alliance with Armenia and acquiescing to Azerbaijani aggression, Russia wants to convince Aliyev not to undermine Russia’s strategy of disrupting western natural gas supplies.

Furthermore, the destabilizing effect of a tense relationship between Armenia and Azerbaijan strengthens Russia’s role as an arbiter in the region.

Aliyev knows how to stir nationalist fervour, and he’s likely to continue creating tensions if Russia allows him to.

He’s already been designating territories in Armenia as “western Azerbaijani lands” and vowed to work for “the return” of western Azerbaijanis to Armenia.

Another reason Russia is turning a blind eye to Azerbaijan’s military posturing — including its occupation of 50 square kilometres of Armenian territory — is the effect it has in destabilizing the current Armenian government.

Russian President Vladimir Putin and Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan shake hands during their meeting in Russia in June 2023. (Ramil Sitdikov, Sputnik, Kremlin Pool Photo via AP, File)

Russia considers Armenia a reluctant ally that’s increasingly looking westwards. Already, Armenia’s pro-Russian opposition anticipates the demise of Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan and its return to power, despite its history of corruption and cronyism.

If the current developments provide any indication of what a post-conflict scenario underwritten by Russia and Turkey will look like in the region, the picture is bleak.

Russia and Turkey opt for containment, not peace and reconciliation, and so tensions will likely intensify in the South Caucasus until the next opportunity to forge a genuine peace presents itself.

https://theconversation.com/nagorno-karabakh-whats-next-for-the-south-caucasus-region-following-azerbaijans-aggression-against-armenians-214661

Azerbaijan’s president scolded the European Union and warned that France’s decision to send military aid to Armenia could trigger a new conflict in the South Caucasus after a lightening Azerbaijani military operation last month.

Azerbaijan’s President Ilham Aliyev last week pulled out of an EU-brokered meeting with Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan at which Brussels said it was standing by Armenia.

But Aliyev criticised the EU’s approach – and particularly France’s position – when European Council, Charles Michel, telephoned him, according to an Azerbaijani statement issued late on Saturday.

President Ilham Aliyev said “that due to the well-known position of France, Azerbaijan did not participate in the meeting in Granada,” the Azerbaijani presidential office said.

“The head of state emphasised that the provision of weapons by France to Armenia was an approach that was not serving peace, but one intended to inflate a new conflict, and if any new conflict occurs in the region, France would be responsible for causing it.”

France has agreed on future contracts with Armenia to supply it with military equipment to help ensure its defences, Foreign Minister Catherine Colonna said on 3 October during a visit to Yerevan.

She declined to elaborate on what sort of military aid was envisaged for Armenia under future supply contracts. French President Emmanuel Macron scolded Azerbaijan, saying that Baku appeared to have a problem with international law.

Aliyev restored control over the breakaway region of Nagorno-Karabakh last month with a 24-hour military operation which triggered the exodus of most of the territory’s 120,000 ethnic Armenians to Armenia.

Aliyev said he had acted in accordance with international law, adding that eight villages in Azerbaijan were “still under Armenian occupation, and stressed the importance of liberating these villages from occupation.”

The Azerbaijani president visited Georgia on Sunday and thanked Tbilisi for offering to mediate for a peace agreement between Azerbaijan and Armenia.

But an Armenian envoy said he feared Azerbaijan could invade within weeks.

“We are now under imminent threat of invasion,” the Armenian ambassador-designate to the EU, Tigran Balayan, told Brussels Signal.