Azerbaijan recaptured most of Nagorno-Karabakh, a mountainous area that is internationally recognized as its territory, during a brief war in 2020 that ended decades of Armenian occupation and control of the region. A truce hastily brokered by Russia helped end the fighting but left tens of thousands of ethnic Armenians living in the region, especially in the capital city, Stepanakert, without a long-term plan, but ostensibly under the protection of Russian peacekeepers.
A military offensive by Azerbaijan last week forced the self-declared government of Nagorno-Karabakh, which Armenians call Artsakh, to capitulate and agree to dismantle its armed forces. Warnings by local authorities that the advancing Azerbaijani forces would engage in “ethnic cleansing” have terrified residents and spurred thousands of people to evacuate to Armenia.
Russia last week again claimed to broker a cease-fire, but events in recent days demonstrated a stunning failure by Moscow to fulfill its peacekeeping role. Moscow was unable to prevent the military operation by Azerbaijan, to protect the Armenians living in the region or to enforce the terms of the 2020 cease-fire, which called for maintaining a highway that connects Stepanakert and Armenia. The highway, known as the Lachin Corridor, has been blocked for nearly a year, and closed entirely since mid-June.
Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov bristled on Monday at suggestions that Russian peacekeepers had failed in their mission. “We understand the emotional intensity of the moment, but we categorically disagree with the attempt to put the responsibility on the Russian side, and especially on the Russian peacekeepers, who are showing real heroism, performing their functions in accordance with the mandate that is in place,” Peskov said.
He insisted that “Armenia is a nation close to us,” and pledged continued dialogue with Yerevan.
But other nations appeared to be bracing for a humanitarian disaster.
More than 6,650 Armenians have left Nagorno-Karabakh since Sunday, according to Armenian officials, and thousands more want to leave. Residents are searching desperately for fuel and roads are choked.
Two senior U.S. officials — Samantha Power, head of the U.S. Agency for International Development, and Yuri Kim, acting assistant secretary of state for Europe and Eurasian affairs — met Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan in Yerevan on Monday.
Pashinyan warned Power on that ethnic cleansing of the Armenians of Nagorno-Karabakh “is happening right now, and it is a very tragic fact.”
“We tried to inform the international community that this ethnic cleansing was going to happen, but unfortunately we failed to prevent it,” he said.
The U.S. visit comes as Pashinyan pivots Yerevan’s foreign policy from Russia toward the West, amid anger in Armenia that Russia — long Armenia’s main security partner — failed to prevent last week’s renewed attacks or to effectively halt Azerbaijan’s nine-month blockade of the Lachin Corridor, which led to a crisis, including food shortages.
Baku’s success in its military operation last week marked a sweeping change in a strategic and fragile South Caucasus region, traversed by crucial oil and gas pipelines, where Russia, Turkey and the West all jostle for influence and leverage.
Azerbaijan and Armenia have fought two wars over Nagorno-Karabakh, the first in the late 1980s and early 1990s, when Armenia took control of Nagorno-Karabakh and several other regions of Azerbaijan, displacing more than half a million Azerbaijanis in a humiliating defeat for Baku. In the 44-day war in 2020, Azerbaijan reclaimed most of the territory it had lost.
Moscow and Yerevan have engaged in mutual recriminations since last week’s military action, with Russian officials claiming that Pashinyan was to blame after conceding earlier this year that Nagorno-Karabakh was part of Azerbaijan.
In a televised address Sunday, Pashinyan attacked “the security systems and the allies we have relied on for many years,” in a sharp criticism of Russia and the Moscow-dominated Collective Security Treaty Organization, a regional security grouping that declined to intervene when hostilities broke out in 2020 and briefly last year.
Russia’s Foreign Ministry on Monday…
Read More: Ethnic Armenians flee Nagorno-Karabakh as Russia fails to uphold peace deal