Statistics compiled by Baku’s border service and seen by POLITICO record a total of 1,927 people passing through the checkpoint between Armenia and Nagorno-Karabakh since it opened in April, while more than a hundred cargo vehicles have been waved through in each direction.
The EU and U.S. have repeatedly warned that the installation of the checkpoint could trigger a “humanitarian crisis” in the war-torn region, as tensions flare across the former Soviet Union.
“As is demonstrated by free and unimpeded passage of Armenian residents, allegations the checkpoint prevents movement and is a ‘blockade’ are completely baseless,” said Aykhan Hajizade, spokesman for Azerbaijan’s foreign ministry.
Inside Azerbaijan’s internationally recognized borders, the area has been controlled by its Armenian population since a war that followed the collapse of the USSR. In 2020, Baku launched an offensive to take back swathes of land, leaving the region’s estimated 100,000 residents connected to Armenia by a sole highway, known as the Lachin corridor.
A Moscow-brokered cease-fire saw Russian peacekeepers deployed to oversee the road. However, Baku claims Armenia was using it to bring in weaponry and export resources. Last December, Azerbaijani activists, backed by the government, staged a sit-in on the Lachin corridor, preventing civilian traffic from passing.
Since then, Nagorno-Karabakh’s Armenians have been dependent on Russian peacekeeper convoys and Red Cross aid workers to bring in supplies. The demonstrations ended in April after Azerbaijan installed the border post on the corridor.
Many of those using the checkpoint appear to have done so under escort by Russian peacekeepers or with the Red Cross. According to Yerevan, three people with registered addresses inside Armenia have been denied entry.
However, according to Tigran Grigoryan, a political analyst from Nagorno-Karabakh who heads Yerevan’s Regional Center for Democracy and Security, local Armenians are only crossing the border in emergencies.
“The majority of the population isn’t using it — it’s dangerous, nobody knows what will happen there. But it’s also a matter of principle — nobody in Karabakh wants to legitimize this new status quo,” he said.
Grigoryan believes local Armenians will be pressured to register for Azerbaijani passports. “For the majority of people, this is unacceptable. If the choice is to accept the passports or leave the territory, the majority of people will choose to leave.”
Armenia has claimed Azerbaijan’s efforts to tighten control over Nagorno-Karabakh could lead to “ethnic cleansing.” Yerevan has accepted Baku’s sovereignty over the region, but insists an international mechanism should be put in place to guarantee the rights of Armenians living there in peace talks mediated by the EU, U.S. and Russia.
Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev, meanwhile, has said the region is an internal issue and any reference to it in a peace deal is “unacceptable.” He has offered “amnesty” to the Karabakh Armenian leadership, provided they accept being governed from Baku.
A series of bloody clashes on the shared border in recent days have left several injured on the Armenian side and reignited concerns over the prospect of a renewed conflict. On Thursday morning, Azerbaijan claimed the checkpoint itself had come under attack, leaving one border guard injured.
Later the same day, Artak Beglaryan, a senior Nagorno-Karabakh Armenian official, said that Russian peacekeepers and Red Cross convoys had been prevented from crossing through the checkpoint in the wake of the reported incident.
This article has been updated.