Armenian protesters demonstrate in front of a checkpoint near Stepanakert, Nagorno-Karabakh, December 27, 2022. ANI BALAYAN / AFP
Cut off from the rest of the world for more than a month, the residents of Nagorno-Karabakh, the mostly Armenian enclave that declared independence from Azerbaijan in September 1991, are trying to survive in the middle of winter under precarious conditions, deprived of food, supplies and electricity and separated from their families for some who remained in Armenia.
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Since December 12, 2022, Azerbaijani militants dispatched from Baku have blocked traffic on the only road connecting the province with Armenia. They are demanding access to what they call “illegal mining sites” in parts of Nagorno-Karabakh controlled by Armenians. Emboldened by its military success in the 2020 Autumn War, Azerbaijan intends to assert control of the entire region, including Nagorno-Karabakh, and does not envisage a special status for the province.
Along the Lachin Corridor, the blockade is not complete and some International Committee of the Red Cross vehicles manage to circulate, transporting medicines and patients. Goods are sometimes transported by the Russian peacekeepers. But supplies remain inadequate, which has forced authorities in the separatist province to set up a ration card system to limit cash withdrawals and fueling.
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“The situation is deteriorating. There is a lack of food, fruit, vegetables. There is no more diesel, so no more farm work. On December 13th the gas was shut off and then turned on again, but it could be again. We also have power outages, ”explains Grant Safarian, head of the province’s agriculture, during a video conference organized on Thursday, January 12, from Stepanakert, the capital of the enclave, where the authorities are blocked, as is the population.
Present at the meeting, Ruben Vardanian, the Yerevan-born former Russian investment banker who currently heads the Nagorno-Karabakh government, believes that an airlift “like the one created to counteract the West Berlin blockade” would Soviets between 1948 and 1949 should be implemented with the help of the international community.
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After an initial war during the collapse of the USSR over control of Nagorno-Karabakh, Azerbaijan and Armenia clashed again in the fall of 2020. A conflict that ended in the defeat of Yerevan notably forced the return of territories to Baku, part of the separatist province. Since then, despite the ceasefire agreement signed under Russian aegis, the embers of the conflict have never really died down. In September 2022, fighting on the border between the two countries claimed 286 lives.
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