Armenia and Azerbaijan on Monday pledged “not to use force” to find a solution to their conflict over the Nagorno-Karabakh enclave, following a summit with Vladimir Putin aimed at restoring Moscow’s grip in the Caucasus.
This summit was organized in Sochi, southwest Russia, a month after border fighting left 286 dead. This is the highest toll since a 2020 war over control of Nagorno-Karabakh, a region disputed between these two former Soviet republics since the 1990s.
“A useful meeting,” says Putin
In a joint statement adopted at the end of the summit, Baku and Yerevan pledged “not to use force” and “to settle any disputes solely on the basis of the recognition of mutual sovereignty and territorial integration.”
They also underlined “the importance of active preparations for the conclusion of a peace agreement between Azerbaijan and Armenia to ensure a durable and long-term peace in the region.”
“In our common opinion, it was a very useful meeting that created a very good atmosphere for possible future agreements,” Russian President Vladimir Putin said after the summit with his Azerbaijani counterpart Ilham Aliyev and Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinian.
“For its part, Russia will do everything possible to find a final and comprehensive solution” to the conflict in Nagorno-Karabakh, he assured, adding: “It is in everyone’s interest to normalize relations”.
Constrained for eight months by his offensive against Ukraine, which has embarrassed Moscow’s traditional partners, with this summit Putin wanted Russia to regain its traditional arbiter role in this unstable region where the West is conducting its own mediation efforts.
“Normalization”
The Russian President first spoke one-on-one with Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan, who stressed that his priorities were Azerbaijan’s withdrawal from the areas of Nagorno-Karabakh where Russian peacekeepers are staying and the release of prisoners of war. The Russian President then received his Azerbaijani counterpart Ilham Aliyev, who thanked him for “giving impetus to the normalization process”.
The autumn 2020 war between Armenia and Azerbaijan left more than 6,500 dead on both sides and ended in an Armenian military defeat and a Moscow-sponsored peace deal. However, despite the presence of Russian soldiers, sporadic clashes continued, whether in Nagorno-Karabakh or on the recognized border between the two countries, as in September.
These Russian-sponsored talks come at a time when western capitals have played a more active role in mediating the conflict between Armenia and Azerbaijan. European Council President Charles Michel and French President Emmanuel Macron organized negotiations between Pashinian and Aliyev in Brussels in August.
EU-Russia alienation
The EU and Russia, which frown on these initiatives in a region it considers its backyard, have exchanged scathing criticisms of their respective mediation efforts. In particular, Macron had accused Russia of wanting to “destabilize” the peace process, and Vladimir Putin had denounced “unacceptable” statements.
“Our European partners are pursuing their policies in such a way that they aim to exclude Russia from all negotiation formats,” Putin accused at a press conference in Sochi on Monday, considering this “impossible”.
Ahead of the talks, Pashinyan announced on Saturday that he was prepared to extend the presence of Russia’s 2,000 peacekeepers by up to 20 years. The existing agreement, which was signed in 2020, provides for its use for five years with possible automatic renewal.
The Azerbaijani president has vowed to repopulate Karabakh with Azerbaijanis as a result of his military victory in 2020, while this mostly Armenian-inhabited region has eluded Baku’s control since a first war in the 1990s that killed nearly 30,000 people , at the time of the breakup of the USSR. Turkey, an ally of Baku, has also made mediation efforts after its President Recep Tayyip Erdogan recently met Aliyev and Pashinian in Prague.