Yury Melkonyan, 64, sits in his house damaged by shelling from Azerbaijan's artillery (Image: AP )
A territorial dispute on the doorsteps of the European Union has left more than 100,000 civilians facing starvation.
Ethnically Armenian residents of Nagorno-Karabakh, more than 60 miles from the Armenian border, have little to no access to food and medical supplies following a lengthy Azerbaijani blockade of the Lachin Corridor.
Nagorno-Karabakh was recognized as Azerbaijani following a Russian-negotiated peace settlement with Armenia that ended 44 days of fighting, and which claimed the lives of 6,000 soldiers, in 2020.
Under the deal, Russian peacekeepers were deployed to Karabakh to guard the only road left linking the enclave with Armenia, the so-called Lachin Corridor.
But in December 2022, with Russia concentrating on its “special military operation” in Ukraine, Azerbaijan began a blockade of the three-mile road into Karabakh, closing the territory.
Justifying their decision, they accused Armenia of engaging in a “provocative and irresponsible political campaign” to undermine Azerbaijan’s sovereignty and territorial integrity, which includes Nagorno-Karabakh and the Lachin Corridor.
In the infancy of the blockade, Russian peacekeepers and Red Cross aid workers were permitted to cross the corridor.
But the Russians stationed there, with its governing forces focussed on Ukraine, have avoided risking conflict to ensure the corridor is not entirely claimed by Azerbaijan.
Meanwhile, Red Cross aid workers, who had been ensuring the Karabakh population receive food and medical supplies in accordance with the peace settlement, have been accused of smuggling contraband into the territory.
Their last delivery of aid was on July 7, according to Zara Amatuni, a spokesperson for the charity in Armenia.
A 19-truck convoy carrying around 360 tonnes of humanitarian cargo from Armenia has now been stuck at the entrance of the Lachin Corridor for the past two weeks, waiting for permission to pass through Azerbaijan’s checkpoint.
Last month, Arayik Harutyunyan, the president of Nagorno-Karabakh, known as Artsakh in Armenia, declared the region a “disaster zone”.
Residents of Stepanakert, the de-facto capital of Karabakh, told The Daily Telegraph that being in the cut-off community was like “living in a concentration camp”.
Armine Hayrapetyan, 45, said: “We have lost our freedom, lost our rights. Now, it is like we are living in a concentration camp.”
Her diabetic aunt, unable to replenish her vital pills to lower her blood sugar levels, has only five left before she runs out. “After that she doesn’t know what to do,” she said.
Nina, a 23-year-old ethnic Armenian living in Karabakh, said she struggled to eat just a basic amount of food each day, adding: “If this continues, people will end up dying.”
In the latest United Nations meeting on the crisis on Wednesday (August 17), Armenia’s foreign minister Ararat Mirzoyan told the council that as a result of the blockade, there is no economic activity in Nagorno-Karabakh, thousands of people are unemployed, stores are empty and women, children and the elderly stand in long lines to be able to buy bread, fruit and vegetables. In addition, he said, Azerbaijan has disrupted the supply of electricity through the only high voltage line between Armenia and Nagorno-Karabakh since January 9.
Mirzoyan quoted a report from Luis Moreno Ocampo, the former chief prosecutor of the International Criminal Court, saying “there is a reasonable basis to believe that a genocide is being committed” as a result of the blockade.