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Russia helped end a 2020 war and its troops monitored the ceasefire. But with a new crisis heating up in the Caucasus, Moscow, distracted and weakened by Ukraine, intervened.
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By Anton Troianovsky
In late 2020, when Russian President Vladimir V. Putin negotiated an end to a war in the Caucasus between Azerbaijan and Armenia and placed 2,000 Russian peacekeepers between the two sides, it seemed like a strategic masterstroke.
The agreement gave Russia a military presence in one post-Soviet country, Azerbaijan, while reinforcing dependence on another, Armenia, on Russia as a guarantor of its security. It positions Putin as a peacemaker and turns out to assert his right to valid influence from Russia, the only force capable of maintaining stability in the former Soviet sphere.
Just two years later, the standoff over Azerbaijan’s Nagorno-Karabakh region is heating up again and Russia, distracted and weakened by the war in Ukraine, has not intervened. minds to impose their will on other smaller neighbors in the midst of their struggles in Ukraine.
Since December 12, the mountain road linking Nagorno-Karabakh with Armenia has been blocked amid protests by Azerbaijani activists who claim to oppose illegal mining operations in the region. The government of Azerbaijan approved the protests; Armenians say Azerbaijan designed them and criticize Russian peacekeepers for keeping the road open.
“You can see that Russia’s resources in the region are limited,” said Farhad Mammadov, a pro-government analyst in Baku, Azerbaijan’s capital. “Russia is weakening. “
The roadblocks are a further escalation in the decades-long bloody standoff over an enclave for tens of thousands of ethnic Armenians within Azerbaijan’s identified borders around the world.
In Nagorno-Karabakh, supermarkets are stocked with little alcohol and sweets, and diaper materials and basic medicines are so low that citizens post on Facebook for them, according to Tatev Azizyan, a local journalist. Starting Friday, other people will have to provide ration cards to buy rice, pasta, buckwheat or sugar.
The Russian invasion of Ukraine has reformed relations around the world, nowhere more blatantly than on the border between Europe and Asia, strengthening the hands of Turkey and Iran, now vital resources of industry and weapons for Moscow, while undermining Russian influence in the Caucasus.
Armenia is part of the Russian-led military alliance of six post-Soviet countries, the Collective Security Treaty Organization, and hosts a Russian military base. But so far, the Kremlin, with its full hands in Ukraine, has done nothing for an ally.
“The total on Ukraine makes the scenario more fragile and gives Azerbaijan a new opportunity to use force and be more aggressive,” Vahan Kostanyan, an adviser to Armenia’s foreign minister, said in a recent interview.
Armenia won a war against Azerbaijan over Nagorno-Karabakh in the early 1990s, giving it about 13% of Azerbaijan’s total dominance, adding Nagorno-Karabakh. Azerbaijan regained much of it when it introduced an offensive in 2020, taking credit for its herbal fuel gains to buy impressive weapons from Turkey and Israel.
The recent war ended after 44 days with the ceasefire brokered through Mr. Putin and Russian troops deployed among Armenians remaining in and around Stepanakert, the region’s largest city, and the road connecting it to Armenia.
Now some Azerbaijani Armenians intend to starve them to death with roadblocks. “This is for us to leave our homeland,” Azizyan, a journalist in the Armenian-populated Nagorno-Karabakh, said in a telephone interview. “That’s your goal. “
President Ilham Aliyev of Azerbaijan said last week that “whoever does not need our citizen, the road is not closed; It’s open. They can leave when they need to. “
Russia’s influence is waning in both countries. In Azerbaijan, Ukraine’s invasion has made public opinion opposed to Russia and its peacekeeping contingent, said Zaur Shiriyev, an analyst at Crisis Group in Baku. In Armenia, Russia’s military is less advantageous, as Russia is no longer a prolific arms exporter. – wants them in Ukraine – and M. Putin wants to strengthen ties with Turkey, Azerbaijan’s main ally.
Tigran Grigoryan, an Armenian political analyst, said the war in Ukraine had “created an environment in which Russian deterrence works in the region. “
There is little clarity on how the existing crisis can be resolved. Azerbaijan insists that it has not imposed a blockade on Nagorny Karabakh and that humanitarian and medical traffic is allowed through. But on the ground, the scenario looks dire for Armenians in Nagorno. Karabakh who are stranded with limited food and other essentials, and isolated from the circle of relatives who were in Armenia when the crisis began.
Azizyan said he recently faced a six-hour line at an ATM and such undeniable things as oranges, cheese or fever medication have valuable assets. Kindergartens are closed, he said, due to lack of food.
After Russian peacekeepers were recently filmed distributing humanitarian aid outdoors at a local maternity hospital, citizens split into two groups on social media, he said: some thanked the Russians, while others asked why they weren’t doing more.
“No one understands,” Azizyan said, why Russia won’t reopen the road. “People started getting angry and expressing their outrage against the peacekeepers. “
Although Azerbaijan won the 2020 war, it has not yet achieved all its goals, adding a departure lounge to the Azerbaijani enclave of Nakhchivan, a separate portion of Azerbaijani territory on Armenia’s southwestern border, which would give the country a direct link with Turkey. It also seeks more about the recently blocked road, known as the Lachin Corridor, claiming Armenia is using it to illegally send landmines into the territory.
Russia has tried to stay on a middle path amid the escalation. While Armenia is an ally of the military, Aliyev has developed a close relationship with Putin and the two countries are Russia’s economic partners amid Western sanctions.
“We call on Azerbaijanis and Armenians to show goodwill and seek joint compromises,” Maria V said last week. Zakharova, spokesperson for the Russian Foreign Ministry.
The Kremlin continues to play a role in negotiations between Azerbaijan and Armenia, and Putin held talks with Aliyev and Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan in December in St. Petersburg. In televised remarks of his meeting with Putin, Pashinyan noted with obvious frustration that “it turns out that the Lachin room is not under the control of Russian peacekeepers. “
Last week, Pashinyan pushed back Moscow, canceling planned army training in Armenia this year through the Russian-led alliance.
“The presence of Russia’s military in Armenia only guarantees its security, but creates threats to Armenia’s security,” Putin said. Pashinyan, according to the Associated Press.
But analysts say Armenia is unlikely to shed its dependence on Russia anytime soon, the latest in a series of classes for post-Soviet countries about the difficulty of breaking out of Moscow’s security shadow, especially as instability looms. In Belarus in 2020 and Kazakhstan last year, leaders of ex-Soviet countries turned to Putin for help in the face of popular uprisings, strengthening their grip on either nation.
“Armenia has a huge strategic problem,” said Thomas de Waal, a senior fellow at Carnegie Europe who has studied the conflict for decades. Pashinyan “would like a much more balanced foreign policy and yet has Russia as his main ally—political ally. “
However, with Moscow distracted, the European Union and the United States have stepped up their own efforts to negotiate lasting peace and their influence in the Caucasus. Pashinyan and Aliyev met last August and October in meetings organized by the European Union, and the foreign ministers of the two countries met in Washington in November.
Analysts have described the two tracks of negotiation as: one conducted through Russia, the other through the EU, at a time when Moscow and the West are caught in their most intense clash in decades. But the EU’s special representative for the South Caucasus, Toivo Klaar, said in an interview that he had been in contact with his Russian counterpart, diplomat Igor Khovayev, and held two face-to-face meetings with him last fall.
“Under the existing circumstances, there is potentially more area for Armenia and Azerbaijan to triumph over their conflict,” Klaar said. “The question is whether they are able to take advantage of this opportunity. “
Ivan Nechepurenko contributed reporting from Yerevan, Armenia.
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