2023-09-20 17:30:00
The cannons roar again in theAlt Karabakh, the secessionist enclave in Azerbaijani territory that has given rise to two wars between Armenia and Azerbaijan. the Baku troops launched an “anti-terrorist operation” on Tuesday with artillery and drone bombings on the capital of the enclave and several points close to the name contact line that separates the parties since the armistice of November 2020. The regime ofIlham Aliyev initially described the offensive as a response to the death a day earlier of 11 Azerbaijanis byexplosion of two mines which he attributed to “groups of saboteurs of the Armenian army”. It was not until later that he clarified his intentions through a statement from his presidency: the operation will not stop until theAlt Karabakh is dearmed i “dissolve the illegal regime” that he manages.
Among the good connoisseurs of the region, the surprise at what has happened is relative. thelast war between the parties was settled the November 2020 with one devastating victory of Azerbaijana country rich in hydrocarbons, endorsed by Türkiye and armed by Russia i Israel. In just six weeks, he managed to recover almost all the territory that Armenia had occupied within their borders since 1994, when the first dispute between the two ended. But that cake was missing the icing: the heart of Nagorno-Karabakh, an Armenian-majority region that has struggled since the 1990s for join the motherland or, at least, to be independent. It has not succeeded due to lack of international recognition, but it has managed to govern itself since then with support from Yerevan. A status quo that Baku now wants to destroy forever to regain the comprehensive control of its sovereignty.
The goal is legitimate. The problem is that Baku is watching from do it by force without waiting for the entangled peace process to bear fruit. It feels strong. Not just because it is better armed and has more belligerent allies, but because Russia seems to have given up on his obligations to guarantee safety in the region Obligations acquired by mediating in the last armistice, which included the deployment of 2,000 Russian intermediary troops in the region, in charge of preserving the ceasefire and guaranteeing the freedom of movement between Armenia and Nagorno-Karabakh.
Ceasefire violations
None of this, however, has happened. With the Kremlin distracted in its brutal war of conquest in UkraineBaku has been dedicated to throwing blinkers attacks on their enemieswhile besieging Nagorno-Karabakh with a blockade that has lasted for ten months and threatens to starve the Armenian population of the enclave It goes without saying that in Armenia, a traditional ally of Moscow, the frustration is maximum. “The Armenians are disappointed by the lack of support from Russia,” says Marie Dumoulin from the European Council on Foreign Relations. “The Russian contingent in Nagorno-Karabakh has not been able to prevent any of them military actions of Azerbaijan since the 2020 ceasefire nor prevent it from blocking the lachin corridor». This corridor is the umbilical cord that unites the enclave with Armenia.
All this has made the Armenian president, Nikol Pashinyan, who came to power after the pro-democratic revolution of 2018you embarked on a very risky pulse with Russia, the consequences of which he might be paying now. In a recent interview with ‘La Reppublica’, Pashinyan stated that his country is beginning to savor the “bitter fruits” of the“strategic mistake” which has meant leaving Armenia’s security almost entirely in Moscow’s hands.
The same capital that should have come to its rescue in September last year, when Azerbaijan launched another large-scale attack on Armenian territory that left 400 dead on both sides. This is what the clauses of theCollective Security Treaty Organization (CSTO), a collective defense body that Russia leads and to which Armenia belongs along with four other former Soviet republics. Since then Pashinyan has not stopped expressing his frustration with facts.
Armenia moves away from Russia
After refusing to host planned OTSC maneuvers in its territory, he had no objection to accepting them with the US. It also promoted the ratification of theStatute of Rome in the Armenian Parliament, a proposal that, if successful, would make Armenia a member of the International Criminal Court (CPI) The initiative seeks to put a price on Azerbaijan’s potential crimes, but has angered Russia as, among other things, the ICC issued a arrest warrant against Vladimir Putin. To finish spilling the beans, the Armenian first lady recently visited Kyiv, where she offered help Ukraine
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“It is possible that this Government will end up breaking relations with Russia, but it will be only this Government, which is transferring to the South Caucasus the same dichotomy between Russia and the West that prevails in Ukraine”, says the former Armenian deputy, All Poghosyan, who is as disappointed with Moscow as with President Pashinyan’s policies. “There are three million Armenians in Russia, so we should look for solutions that do not complicate life in our diaspora,” he adds from Yerevan.
The Kremlin has taken note of the irreverent gosadia by Pashinyan and, as the London Times asked last night, it should not be ruled out that Putin has given green light to Azerbaijan to launch its offensive and end the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict once and for all. Among Armenians in the enclave, terror is widespread. They believe that Baku will not stop until they are expelled or put to the knife, one potential ethnic cleansing operation which revives the ghosts of the genocide that the Armenian people suffered a century ago.
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