Russia has for the first time explicitly said that the Armenian population of Nagorno-Karabakh should submit to Azerbaijani rule.
"The path [ahead] is not an easy one. A number of complicated and important issues need to be resolved. The most sensitive among them has been and remains the problem of guarantees for the rights and securities of the Armenians of Nagorno-Karabakh in the context of ensuring Azerbaijan's territorial integrity," Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said on July 25 after meeting with his Armenian and Azerbaijani counterparts.
His statement contained no reference to an "international mechanism for the rights and securities of the Karabakh Armenians" that regularly appears in statements by European and U.S. intermediaries (who oversee a separate track of negotiations not coordinated with the Russian-led talks).
He spoke instead of Karabakhis' rights "proceeding from relevant legislation and international obligations (in this case Azerbaijan's), including numerous conventions on ensuring the rights of ethnic minorities."
It's a stark change in policy from Russia, which for a long time sought to freeze the issue of Nagorno-Karabakh's status. It had, however, signaled a change on July 15 with a statement that "by recognizing Nagorno-Karabakh as part of Azerbaijani territory," Armenia had "cardinally changed the fundamental conditions" under which the Russian-brokered cease-fire that ended the 2020 Second Karabakh War was signed.
(In fact, Armenia has not "recognized Nagorno-Karabakh as part of Azerbaijani territory," it has stated its willingness to do so.)
Russia's new and relatively Azerbaijan-friendly stance follows recent positive assessments from Baku of the EU-mediated negotiations and continued grumbles of dissatisfaction with the presence of Russian peacekeepers in Karabakh (whose term of deployment is set to expire in 2025).
Lavrov's remark has not yet drawn much of a response in Armenia or Nagorno-Karabakh. Yerevan and Stepanakert both saw massive rallies, connected to each other by video link, on the evening of July 25.
Gurgen Nersisyan, the de facto Karabakh state minister, voiced the central demand: that Armenia reject recognizing the region as part of Azerbaijan.
"Such an approach cannot ensure peace in the region or a dignified existence for the people of Artsakh [Nagorno-Karabakh]. Furthermore, it can't guarantee even the existence of the Republic of Armenia, because the Turkish-Azerbaijani tandem is targeting not Artsakh but the whole Armenian nation and its national statehood," he told the crowd at Stepanakert's Renaissance Square.
Meanwhile, the humanitarian situation in Karabakh continues to deteriorate. The region has been under blockade since December 2022 and that blockade has been total or near-total since June 15, when Baku closed its border checkpoint to traffic on the Lachin corridor connecting Armenia and Nagorno-Karabakh. For a time after that, Azerbaijan periodically allowed the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) to supply food and supplies to Karabakh or transport urgent patients for treatment, but it has severely restricted the ICRC's access to the road since July 11.
The ICRC issued an urgent statement on the situation in Karabakh on July 25.
"The civilian population is now facing a lack of life-saving medication and essentials like hygiene products and baby formula. Fruits, vegetables, and bread are increasingly scarce and costly, while some other food items such as dairy products, sunflower oil, cereal, fish, and chicken are not available. The last time the ICRC was allowed to bring medical items and essential food items into the area was several weeks ago," the statement read, going on to welcome the fact that ICRC has been able to perform 24 patient transfers in recent days.
Laurence Broers, a leading scholar of the Azerbaijan-Armenia conflict, also sounded the alarm. In a tweet thread posted on July 25, he warned that the blockade of Karabakh could have devastating repercussions beyond just the fate of the Karabakh Armenians.
"The starvation of the Armenian population will leave a new legacy of unforgiving distrust cancelling any hopes of reconstituting community relations," he wrote.
"[A]t a time when Azerbaijan has a counterpart in Yerevan more amenable to peace than any since the mid-1990s, any negotiated outcomes risk being discredited as the results of coerced agreement under duress. A peace that is extorted today will unravel tomorrow.
"The ethnic cleansing of Karabakh would mean a new chapter in the logic of coercive, exclusive nation-building in the South Caucasus, a whole new raft of contested issues between Armenians and Azerbaijanis, and chilling implications for the region’s other minority populations."
Meanwhile, for the first time since the start of the blockade, the Armenian government dispatched a convoy of humanitarian aid to Karabakh on July 26. Azerbaijan's Border Service called the move a "provocative act" and said that the "Armenian side bears all responsibility" for its possible consequences.
The convoy was approaching the border as of the time of publication.