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Nagorno-Karabakh – A group of Armenian soldiers in thick winter jackets stand idly around the first checkpoint on the road to Nagorno-Karabakh, some smoking, some looking at the mountains behind where Azerbaijani troops are said to have set up firing positions.
For three decades, this highway was the only route in or out of the breakaway region — within Azerbaijan’s internationally recognized borders but held by its ethnic Armenian majority since the fall of the Soviet Union.
But now the regular traffic of trucks, buses and old Ladas laden with luggage has come to a halt, and the guards on duty watch as convoy after convoy rumbles by carrying Russian peacekeepers and the occasional Red Cross mission.
Last month, the so-called Lachin Corridor linking Nagorno-Karabakh with Armenia was closed, leaving up to 100,000 people living there under an effective blockade, with stocks of food, medicines and other essential supplies running low.
“For the past two days I’ve hardly found anything to eat in the stores,” said Marut Vanyan, a 39-year-old blogger who lives in Stepanakert, the region’s de facto capital.
“First, vegetables and fresh fruit disappeared. Now there is only alcohol on the shelves and not much else. In the morning, some milk and yoghurt comes from local farms, but it goes very quickly,” he told POLITICO.
“Online people only talk about where to buy medicine or a sack of potatoes. In the country people have cows and chickens – but half the population lives in the capital and it is very tough here.”
Post-Soviet stalemate
This is not the first conflict over Nagorno-Karabakh, a region in the South Caucasus that has long been mired in an ethnic and territorial dispute between Armenia and Azerbaijan.
In the 1990s, as the USSR collapsed, Armenian forces took control of areas inhabited by ethnic Armenians in the neighboring Soviet republic and engaged in bloody battles with Azerbaijani forces over lands both sides consider their ancestral lands.
Hundreds of thousands of ethnic Azeris living alongside them were displaced or killed, and the region was governed for almost 30 years as the unrecognized Artsakh Republic, sealed off behind defense lines and accessible only by a mountain road from Armenia.
That all changed in 2020, when Azerbaijani tanks and soldiers rolled across the mine-strewn border, retaking parts of the territory and leaving the Karabakh Armenians in control of only Stepanakert and a few surrounding towns and villages.
A fire at a shop after a rocket attack on October 3, 2020 in Stepanakert, Nagorno-Karabakh | Brendan Hoffman/Getty Images
Buoyed by massive oil and gas revenues and supplied with advanced hardware from its ally Turkey, forces in the Azerbaijani capital of Baku quickly overwhelmed Armenia’s ill-equipped conscripts.
A Kremlin-brokered ceasefire saw 1,500 Russian peacekeepers deployed to act as a buffer and patrol the Lachin Corridor, now a vital lifeline for the Karabakh Armenians, who are flanked on either side by Azerbaijani positions.
But now Russian peacekeepers seem unable or unwilling to keep the corridor open. On December 12, a group of self-proclaimed Azerbaijani environmental protesters, most with no apparent records of eco-activism, pushed past the wire fence and set up camp on the highway while Moscow’s military contingent looked on.
According to Tom de Waal, a senior fellow at Carnegie Europe and author of several books on the conflict, the protesters had “apparently been sent there by the government in Baku” and likened them to the “little green men” that Russia had sent to fight the Occupying Crimea in 2014, all the while denying it had invaded.
Poisoned atmosphere
Azerbaijan claims that the protests do not impede the use of the road, with officials assert that talk of a blockade is fake news. Government spokesmen and state media have variously claimed that the Lachin corridor has been opened to traffic, closed by the Russians, or is being blocked by Karabakh Armenians themselves.
At the same time, they accuse the Armenian side of transporting gold from illegal mines that pollute the environment in Nagorno-Karabakh for export via the highway and using it to transport military equipment such as landmines.
“We will be here until our demands are met,” said Adnan Huseyn, one of the participants in the eco-protest who blocked the corridor. He insisted his group step aside for the Russian peacekeepers and for Red Cross humanitarian aid.
However, officials in Stepanakert point out that 400 tons of food and medicines from Armenia used to come to Artsakh every day. “It is unreasonable to think that a car or two with medicines can solve the problem of the humanitarian crisis.”
What’s clear on the ground at the Tegh checkpoint in Armenia is that most supplies just can’t get through, and the Armenian Foreign Ministry can warning that the danger of famine in the sparsely populated mountain region is now “tangible”.
As the humanitarian situation rapidly deteriorates, a group of more than a dozen non-governmental organizations, including Genocide Watch, has issued a warning that all the conditions for ethnic cleansing have now been met.
“The current blockade is intended, in the words of the Genocide Convention, to intentionally impose living conditions designed to bring about the end, in whole or in part, of any national, ethnic, racial or religious group,” the group said in a statement.
Armenian protesters march towards a Russian peacekeeping checkpoint outside of Stepanakert, Nagorno-Karabakh | Ani Balayan/AFP via Getty Images
Global Consequences
While Russia is busy with its war, other global players are caught in a power vacuum.
Turkey has offered full support to its ally Azerbaijan; Meanwhile, Iran has supported its close partner Armenia and fears any change in its immediate vicinity.
In the closing days of 2022, the UN Security Council was reportedly considering a joint statement on the crisis, with permanent member France pushing for Azerbaijan’s condemnation. Comments from both Armenia and Azerbaijan have since suggested that Russia, another of the five permanent members, effectively blocked the move.
Politicians in the Armenian capital Yerevan have spoken out about what they see as Moscow’s inaction, with Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan accusing Russian troops stationed in the area of ”becoming a silent witness to the depopulation of the Nagorno-Karabakh region”. Armenia is demanding a multinational peacekeeping force or fact-finding mission in an apparent snub to the Kremlin, which also sees the South Caucasus in its sphere of influence.
In a statement to POLITICO, Armenian Foreign Ministry spokesman Vahan Hunanyan wrote that “concrete pressure” on Azerbaijan from international partners is needed. “The message from the US and the EU should be clear – renewed Azerbaijani aggression is clearly unacceptable and will not be tolerated, and any violation of existing agreements will have political and economic consequences.”
However, Baku has consistently rejected the prospect of outside intervention or influence. “The territories of Azerbaijan have been militarily occupied by Armenia for almost 30 years,” said Aykhan Hajizade, spokesman for the country’s foreign ministry.
“During this period, Azerbaijan had requested international organizations to send fact-finding missions to these areas. This was steadfastly opposed by Armenia.” He added that any international organization operating in Azerbaijan needed Baku’s approval and “respected its sovereignty and territorial integrity”.
The EU take action
Against the background of Russian inaction, several western nations have called for an end to the blockade.
“We call on the government of Azerbaijan to restore freedom of movement through the corridor,” US State Department spokesman Ned Price said in December. “The way forward is through negotiations.”
The UK and a handful of other European countries have since echoed those comments, while EU foreign service spokesman Peter Stano said Brussels would urge Azerbaijan to “ensure freedom of movement and security”.
However, some believe that Brussels is not doing enough on humanitarian concerns. Nathalie Loiseau, a French MEP and chair of the European Parliament’s subcommittee on security and defense, told POLITICO that the blockade is “illegal, cruel and contrary to Baku’s claims that the territory belongs to Azerbaijan”.
MEP Nathalie Loiseau said the blockade was “illegal, cruel and contrary to Baku’s claims that the area belongs to Azerbaijan” | Fred Marvaux/European Union
“What country would intentionally prevent their own people from receiving food or medicine?”
“Now that a humanitarian catastrophe is approaching, what are Russian ‘peacekeepers’ doing in the Lachin Corridor? Nothing,” Loiseau said. “The international community must recognize that Russia was not a peacemaker, but prolonged the conflict in the South Caucasus and is no longer a reliable actor.”
She also pointed out that the EU is an important buyer of energy from Azerbaijan. “That makes our voice important. We must not be afraid to defend universal values. If we don’t, who will act?”
Markéta Gregorová, a Greens/EFA MEP and a member of both the parliamentary delegation to Armenia and the EU-Azerbaijan Cooperation Council, went further and told POLITICO: “We could play a bigger role by helping with negotiations. “
“Because we have many economic and other ties with both countries, there are ways we can convince them – but we don’t use them.”
She added that there is a common understanding in the European Parliament that more needs to be done. “But we are a bit dependent on what the Commission and the Council decide.”
According to Gregorová, a deal signed between Brussels and Baku last summer to increase imports of natural gas to replace sanctioned Russian supplies undermined the EU’s ability to exert pressure. “In light of the MoU on gas from Azerbaijan, it is clear that it is having an impact and the response has been much weaker and slower.”
As regional powers decide what to do next, the specter of an existential threat grows for those trapped in the breakaway region.
“We are flesh and blood. We want to eat, we want to live a normal life,” said Vanyan, the Stepanakert-based blogger. “But at the same time, everyone knows that we have nowhere else to go. It’s not a question of food, it’s a question of Karabakh: to be or not to be.”