Thousands of people are demonstrating on Friday, July 14, in Stepanakert, the capital of Nagorno-Karabakh, to demand the reopening of the Lachin corridor, the only road between Armenia and this separatist region, closed this week by Azerbaijan, a noted a correspondent of Agence France-Presse. Around 6,000 protesters gathered in the city’s main square in the morning. The closure of the Lachin corridor, according to Armenia, raises the risk of a serious humanitarian crisis in Nagorno-Karabakh.
The day before, Minister of State Gurgen Nersisyan, an official from Nagorno-Karabakh, asked on social networks that Russia, which has had a contingent of peacekeepers on site since the end of 2020, to restore the traffic on the corridor. “The situation is terrible and will have irreversible consequences in a few days”, he added.
Azerbaijan announced on Tuesday that it had suspended traffic in the corridor on the grounds that drivers working for the Armenian branch of the Red Cross had made “contraband” of goods on this axis, which the International Committee of the Red Cross rejects.
On Thursday, Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinian announced that he will take part in negotiations with Azerbaijan on Saturday under the aegis of the European Union, while denouncing a “blockade” Nagorno-Karabakh illegal.
Since December, Armenia has been alerting the international community to shortages of food and medicine caused by traffic restrictions on the corridor. In April, Azerbaijan announced the creation of a roadblock at the entrance to the Lachin corridor, for security reasons, while armed incidents between Armenian and Azerbaijani forces still occur regularly.
The two Caucasian countries have been fighting over Nagorno-Karabakh since the late 1980s, resulting in two wars, the last of which, in 2020, saw the defeat of Armenian forces and significant territory gains for Azerbaijan. Part of the enclave, with an ethnic Armenian majority but located on the internationally recognized territory of Azerbaijan, remains under the control of Armenian separatists, but it is now surrounded by territories held by Baku.