Category: 2024

Three decades of conflict, ethnic cleansing, and border disputes are over for Armenia and Azerbaijan in the South Caucasus. 2024 will be a breakthrough year for Armenia’s relations with both its Turkish and Azerbaijani neighbors.

But it took a long time coming.

In 1988-1992, Armenia and Azerbaijan were embroiled in the bloodiest conflict among the fifteen Soviet republics. Armenia, with Soviet and Russian military assistance, defeated Azerbaijan and occupied a fifth of its territory. Armenian nationalists declared this territory to be ‘reunited’ in perpetuity in their dream of a greater Armenia (miatsum).

Three decades of UN resolutions, mediation by the OSCE Minsk Group and involvement of the US, France and Russia failed to achieve any change in this situation and breakthrough to peace. This frozen conflict was only unfrozen in 2020 when Azerbaijan won a 44-day war and re-took most of its occupied territory. Last year, Azerbaijan completed the process of re-taking its territory when it removed Armenian control over Karabakh in a one-day war.

These two short wars returned Armenia and Azerbaijan to the common boundary that had existed within the Soviet Union from 1922-1988; that is up to the launch of the First Karabakh War. With the signing of a peace treaty this former Soviet boundary will become the international border between two independent states. Armenia and Azerbaijan would then open full diplomatic relations.

Unfortunately, the conflict in Georgia remains frozen. After Russia invaded Georgia in the summer of 2008, the Kremlin recognized the so-called ‘independence’ of South Ossetia and Abkhazia. Russia’s invasion and blatant violation of Georgian sovereignty was undertaken by President Dmitri Medvedev whom Western governments wrongly dubbed a ‘liberal.’ Medvedev, reputedly an alcoholic, never was a liberal. As Deputy head of Russia’s Security Council he is one of the most hawkish of Russian leaders in his vitriolic demands for aggressive military action in the Kremlin’s war against Ukraine and use of nuclear weapons against Western countries and NATO.

Turkey closed its border with Armenia in 1992 at the end of the First Karabakh War. Negotiations towards what has been called the ‘normalization’ of relations between Turkey and Armenia have been taking place for the past decade. But these could only hope to have a breakthrough after a peace treaty will be signed between Azerbaijan and Armenia. The opening of the border between Turkey and Armenia would be followed by the establishment of full diplomatic relations.

As the Washington think tank Brookings Institution wrote: ‘For Turkey and Armenia, normalization and reconciliation can be seen as two sides of the same coin.’ Reconciliation primarily refers to the Armenian genocide committed in 1915 by the Ottoman Empire, eight years before the founding of the modern Turkish nation-state. The coming to power of Nikol Pashinyan in the 2018 popular Armenian revolution removed the pro-Russian ‘Karabakh clan’ and made normalization and reconciliation with Turkey more likely.

2025 will be the last year of Russia’s so-called ‘peacekeeping’ presence in the Karabakh region. Since the disintegration of the USSR in 1991, Russia has used its ‘peacekeeping’ forces to maintain a permanent sphere of influence over Eurasia. The Kremlin manufactured frozen conflicts in Moldova, Georgia and Azerbaijan and never had an interest in resolving them because Russian ‘peacekeepers’ would then be longer required.

Russia, Armenia, and Azerbaijan signed a ceasefire agreement at the end of the Second Karabakh War in November 2020 which introduced Russian ‘peacekeepers’ for a five-year period. Russia’s so-called ‘peacekeepers’ were criticized by both Yerevan and Baku for their passivity and they became redundant after Azerbaijan’s liberation of Karabakh. In November of next year, Azerbaijan and Armenia will not renew the five-year mandate and Russian ‘peacekeepers’ will be forced to withdraw, the first example of a Russian pull-out in Eurasia.

A new era of peaceful relations with Armenia’s bigger neighbors, Azerbaijan, and Turkey, will bring important benefits. Peace will provide Armenia with the ability to maneuver from a pro-Russian to a more balanced, multi-vector foreign and security policy. Increased trade and energy ties with its neighbors will vastly improve Armenia’s economic prospects and encourage many of the over two million migrants in Russia to return home.

A breakthrough in peace in the South Caucasus, coupled with a potential Russian military defeat in Ukraine, would provide pro-Western Pashinyan with the ability to re-orientate Armenia away from Russia and Eurasia to Europe.  Armenia could begin the process of ‘Armexit’ of its membership from the Eurasian Economic Union and re-join the path, dropped a decade ago, of signing an Association Agreement with the EU. Further down the road, Armenia could join Ukraine, Georgia, and Moldova in receiving candidate EU candidate status.

Peaceful relations between Armenia, Azerbaijan, and Turkey are good for Western strategic interests, the EU, and US, and bad for Russia and Iran who have promoted instability. Peace in the South Caucasus stands in sharp contrast to the growing conflagration in the Middle East.

The views expressed in this article belong to the authors alone and do not necessarily reflect those of Geopoliticalmonitor.com.

https://www.geopoliticalmonitor.com/a-breakthrough-year-for-the-south-caucasus/

Armenia’s recent attempts to diversify its security partnerships have left it with increased narratives of the country’s “Ukrainisation”.

In recent months, Armenia’s volatile security situation has motivated it to diversify its traditionally Russia-dependent security alignments and seek new cooperation with India and EU member states France, Greece, and Cyprus.

This new turn in foreign policy has made the country a target of Russian propaganda, and the official Kremlin has repeatedly accused Armenia of becoming yet another “unfriendly regime.”

Armenia, a member of the Russian-led Collective Security Treaty Organisation (CSTO) since 1992, has started to question its security alliances following the 2020 44-day Armenia-Azerbaijan war.

The CSTO, which also includes Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, and Belarus, is, theoretically, supposed to come to the aid of a member state when it is attacked per Article 4 of the Collective Security Treaty.

However, the organisation has repeatedly shown reluctance to support Armenia in its renewed conflict with Azerbaijan over the past years.

It has instead taken the role of a neutral observer, leading to open criticism of CSTO by Armenian officials.

According to Armenia’s Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan, the CSTO, contrary to its obligations, has not adequately responded to threats to Armenia’s security.

As a sign of protest, Armenian officials have systematically boycotted CSTO high-level meetings in recent months as a response to the bloc’s inaction in the face of Azerbaijani attacks while nominally continuing its membership in the organisation.

Armenia’s boycott of CSTO was followed by regular statements by Russian officials and state-controlled media, in which the country’s leadership has been portrayed as a “puppet” of the collective “West,” while the boycott of CSTO meetings was named an “an initiative” of the collective “West,” which has been trying to distance Armenia from Russia.

In November, Russia’s Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova blamed the West for Armenia’s refusal to attend the CSTO summit.

“The West is obviously behind it [Armenia’s decision to skip the summit]. The West, whose plans in Ukraine have failed, is now gripping Armenia, trying to tear it away from Russia,” she told reporters.

In the aftermath of the September 2023 attack on Nagorno-Karabakh and the forced departure of its Armenian population from their homes, Kremlin and Russian State-affiliated media launched a renewed campaign against the Armenian government.

The campaign allegedly aimed to save the image of the Russian peacekeeper contingent in Nagorno-Karabakh by shifting the blame for its inaction on the Armenian government.

In this regard, Russian officials have repeatedly claimed that the government of Nikol Pashinyan bears full responsibility for Azerbaijan’s victory in Nagorno-Karabakh due to its rapprochement with the West.

The Deputy Chairman of Russia’s Security Council, Dmitry Medvedev, moved to suggest on his Telegram channel that Armenia’s “fate” was predictable, as Pashinyan, who considered himself “a stranger” to Russia, first lost the war, but “strangely kept his position. Then, he decided to blame Russia for his useless defeat. Then, he refused part of the territory of its country. Then he decided to flirt with NATO…”

In media guidelines created and distributed by the Kremlin to Russian Media outlets in September 2023, while covering the Azerbaijani attack on Nagorno-Karabakh, Kremlin-affiliated media were advised to stress that the assault was precipitated by Armenia and its Western “partners.”

To justify the inaction of Russian peacekeepers in Nagorno-Karabakh, the Kremlin suggested media outlets, blaming Pashinyan, who, together with Azerbaijan’s President Ilham Aliyev, made mutual assurances of each country’s respect for the other’s sovereignty in October 2022.

“The Armenian Premier was probably pushed to make these remarks by his Western “partners,” who should now fully share the responsibility for their consequences,” read the guidelines.

The guidelines that were obtained and publicised by Russian language independent news outlets were followed mainly by both Russian media outlets and allegedly Russia-affiliated Armenian media outlets,

In parallel with attempts to blame the West for Armenia’s recent boycott of CSTO and to present Armenia’s government as a puppet of the West, in recent months, the Russian propaganda machine has accused Pashinyan of “actively following in the footsteps of Ukrainian President Vladimir Zelensky.”

These claims made headlines in Russia following the visit of Anna Hakobyan, the wife of Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan, to Kyiv, where she attended the “Summit of First Ladies and Gentlemen” in September last year. The visit was the first open pro-Ukrainian move of the Armenian government since the start of Russia’s war of aggression against Ukraine in February 2022.

On October 17, Armenia’s Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan, while speaking at the European Parliament, openly criticised Armenia’s allies for not supporting the country during the 2023 Azerbaijani campaign in Nagorno-Karabakh.

Pashinyan’s speech triggered a new wave of the “Ukrainisation” narratives in the Russian media.

“We [Russia] see how Armenia is trying to turn into Ukraine No. 3, if we consider Moldova as Ukraine No. 2, and Pashinyan is following in Vladimir Zelensky’s footsteps by quantum leaps,” Russian state agency TASS wrote, citing an unnamed high-ranking official.

The narrative of the “Ukrainization” of Armenia has also been systematically spread by allegedly Russia-affiliated Armenian language media outlets.

Some of them have in recent months regularly claimed that Pashinyan’s attempts to distance itself from Moscow is a Ukraine-style open confrontation with Russia and will turn Armenia into a shooting range and a battlefield for military activities between Russia and the West, with the inevitable “loss of Armenian statehood.”

Amidst growing Russian criticism and anti-Armenian media campaigns of Kremlin-affiliated actors, Armenia’s Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan has repeatedly denied claims of an imminent change in his country’s foreign policy vector.

These reassurances of the Armenian government, however, have not stopped Russian officials and media from generating targeted attacks on the country, which many in Armenia are expecting to increase in the coming months.

[Edited by Alexandra Brzozowski/Alice Taylor]

The Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe (PACE) has become a "toy of France and the Armenian lobby," an Azerbaijani official said Thursday.

"Azerbaijan has restored its territorial integrity without anyone's help. The fact that we fulfill international law ourselves disturbs some Western circles," Adil Aliyev, deputy head of Azerbaijan's National Assembly, said in a statement.

He said that PACE has not taken steps so far against Armenia's policy of occupation and its Assembly applied double standards and acted with prejudice against Azerbaijan.

Aliyev also said the Assembly accepted biased statements against Azerbaijan due to not removing a checkpoint established on the Lachin road because Baku did not allow Armenians to "carry weapons, ammunition and explosives to Azerbaijani lands."

"But there is something they forgot. Having wrong thoughts, such as talking to Azerbaijan threateningly or forcing us to do something, will not harm anyone other than these institutions," added Aliyev.

Azerbaijan's delegation to PACE announced Wednesday it ceased engagement with and presence at the Assembly "until further notice" and expressed that it made the decision "in the face of the current unbearable atmosphere of racism, Azerbaijanophobia and Islamophobia."

Earlier, PACE refused to ratify the credentials of the Azerbaijani delegation in a vote, claiming that the country "did not fulfill major commitments" and showed a "lack of cooperation."

On 19th September 2023, Azerbaijan finally took back the disputed region of Nagorno-Karabakh, fully reversing its defeat in the First Nagorno-Karabakh War of the early 1990s. To mark the beginning of this new era in Azerbaijani history, the country’s elective dictator, Ilham Aliyev, announced snap Presidential “Elections” for 7th February 2024. Aliyev is seeking a new mandate after 20 years in power. 

The result may be a foregone conclusion: the result of his 2013 election victory was accidently released the day before the polls opened. Elections in Azerbaijan are more coronation than competition, and after his military success and swaggering indifference to international law and human rights, he is more popular than ever at home. The question is why Aliyev feels he needs a new domestic mandate right now? 

The answer was revealed in a rambling three-hour television interview with selected journalists in Baku on January 10th. There was a lot of self-aggrandisement in his answers to a string of fawning questions. (You cannot entirely blame the journalists for their submissiveness: eight have been arrested by the authorities in the last two months alone.) 

Amid Aliyev’s celebration of the seizure and ethnic cleansing of Nagorno-Karabakh, there was a clear indication that he may not be finished in his ambition “to fully restore the territorial integrity of Azerbaijan”. He made calculated attacks on Armenia, France, the UN, EU and anyone else not signed up to his historic mission to achieve “justice”, or who might oppose his ambitions for “waging”, as he put it, “political and diplomatic war at the international level.”

Geography is the key to why Aliyev has not finished “waging war”. His country remains split, with the large enclave of Nakhichevan separated from the main part of Azerbaijan by a 35km wide strip of Armenia. At present, the Azeris can only reach Nakhichevan over ground via Iran. There are also eight border villages to which the Azeris lay claim. 

Aliyev himself has formally agreed on several occasions that the demarcation and delimitation of borders between Azerbaijan and Armenia should be based on the 1991 December Alma-Ata Declaration (in Prague in October 2022, for example, and then again in Sochi in October 2022 and Brussels in July 2023).

Now, following military success, he is making outlandish demands to go back to maps from 1918 when the Soviet Union drew the borders between its Socialist Republics. 

“It is no secret that in the 20th century the lands of Azerbaijan were given to Armenia in parts”, he stated ominously on 10th January; “The city of Yerevan was handed over to Armenia […] But it was actually an Azerbaijani city, which was demolished and destroyed.”. This was “a huge historical crime”, he added. This was followed by more and more land being given by the Soviet government to Armenia. The implication is clear: he wants this territory “returned” to Azerbaijan. 

There is also unfinished business is the Zangezur Corridor which is a transport link demanded by Baku between the main part of Azerbaijan and the autonomous region of Nakhichevan. One of those gifts of land was the ceding of West Zangezur to Armenia. If you take the 1918 or pre-World War One maps as the basis for future negotiations, then the President is claiming not just a corridor but the region to be historically part of Azerbaijan. That is also why he does not want the technical process of delimiting the border, i.e. agreeing the precise position of the border line, to be completed before a peace treaty, many of these “historic” claims would not stand up to scrutiny. 

In positioning Azerbaijan for the maximum land grab possible, Aliyev also disregards his obligation to honour the tripartite agreement brokered by Russia that ended the fighting in the Second Nagorno Karabakh war in 2020. Russia was meant to provide security guarantees for that agreement and has failed to do so. 

The government of Azerbaijan undertook to agree a ceasefire and cessation of all hostilities in the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict zone; guarantee the safety of traffic along the Lachin corridor for citizens, vehicles, and goods in both directions. Azerbaijan ended the ceasefire in April and closed the Lachin corridor in September 2023, after ethnically cleansing Nagorno Karabakh of over 100,000 Armenians. 

The Azeris now want Russian FSB protection for the route Zanzegur Corridor and no border checks for Azeri citizens entering Armenian territory, a clear violation of Armenian sovereignty and international law. Only the weakest of the three signatories to the agreement, Armenia, has attempted to keep to its terms and uphold international law. 

Aliyev’s 10th January interview made clear that the President’s view of international law informs the Azerbaijan government’s attitude to the existing peace deal and will inform their approach to future negotiations: “If you look at my speeches, I have repeatedly said that international law does not work. These mechanisms are deployed only for the weaker countries. Bigger states ignore them. Under such circumstances, countries that demand justice, and rightly so, must secure this justice themselves.” 

He speaks from a position of strength. Russia is keeping out of the conflict, with some commentators suspecting an energy deal with Baku as Armenia reorients itself to the West. Turkey stands squarely behind Aliyev. The UK issued strong words but remains an ally of the regime in Baku. 

After Macron failed to get sanctions against Baku through the UN, Aliyev attacked French Imperialism in Algeria and revelling in the speed of the military operation in September, stated that: “I think this should be a lesson not only for Armenia, but also for those standing behind it [ie the French]– that we do not tolerate a language of threats and being treated with arrogance”.  The EU is divided and its most effective negotiator, Council President Charles Michel, is standing down early.

Our current age is one in which dictators act with impunity, and do not hide the fact. They boast about the irrelevance of international law while seeking endorsement for their regimes in elaborate electoral farces. After Aliyev secures victory on 7th February, he will be at his most dangerous, with a mobilised and heavily-equipped military and a geopolitical situation conducive to the realisation of his remaining territorial ambitions through force. 

For its part, Armenia is trying to sound the alarm: its Ambassador to the UK briefed the House of Lords on the risks this week. Aliyev claims the conflict between the two states is not a geopolitical issue, but it is one. The trade routes that cross the region and the spillover of the Ukraine war make it the crucible of the Eastern flank of the unfolding war between Russia and NATO. 

Professor Brian Brivati is a Senior Honorary Policy Fellow at Centre for Public Understanding of Defence and Security, Exeter University

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