Weeks after the Armenian enclave of Nagorno-Karabakh, a region formally part of Azerbaijan, was emptied of its remaining 120,000 residents, Armenia is following Azerbaijan’s military build-up along its southern border with growing concern. After the crushing defeat it suffered in the 44-day war of 2020, Armenia fears it may now face an existential struggle with its long-time enemy.

On 19 September, after a nine-month blockade during which Baku restricted food, electricity, gas and internet access to the enclave, Azerbaijan took over the territory of Nagorno-Karabakh in a 24-hour operation. The capture drove out an Armenian population who had, for centuries, mostly enjoyed a high degree of autonomy, until the Soviet Union detached the region from Armenia proper in 1921 and annexed it to the newly proclaimed Socialist Soviet Republic of Azerbaijan.

With up to 3000 troops taking part in Azerbaijan’s joint military drills with Turkey at Armenia’s border, Armenians fear the same could happen to the population of the southern province of Syunik. Indeed, if Azerbaijani forces cut through that strip of land — only 18 miles wide at its narrowest stretch — Syunik would be cut off from the rest of Armenia and the capital, Yerevan. For Azerbaijan, this would create a corridor that would link up the mainland with an Azeri exclave called Nakhichevan. ‘Azerbaijan’s threats against Syunik have never been a secret,’ a retired senior officer in the Armenian army told me. ‘Their president does it openly, falsifying history, labelling Syunik too as a “historical Azerbaijani territory”, the same claim they made about Nagorno-Karabakh.’ This officer, who requested anonymity, said that the 2021 and 2022 attacks by Azerbaijan against Armenia proper were eloquent testimonies of their intentions. ‘I don’t think the Azerbaijani threat against Syunik has currently subsided.’

Without pressure from the international community — Armenians look particularly to the United States and France, as well as to Iran — and the active efforts of the Armenian diplomacy to prevent a new escalation, an Azerbaijani attack is a permanent possibility. ‘We are always expecting their aggression.’

On a visit to the southern Armenian province, Ara Zargaryan, a literature scholar and army veteran who fought in the 44-day war, showed me constructions that resemble mushroom caps, and are not always visible to the naked eye. These fortified trenches, called ‘gmbet’ (‘dome’ in Armenian), can withstand drone attacks and have multiplied by the thousand across the probable theatre of war.

If Azerbaijan’s forces succeed in creating a corridor, southern Armenia, with its population of 140,000, will find itself trapped by Azerbaijani forces to the north and flanked by Azerbaijani territory. Only a road connecting Armenia to Iran could ensure a measure of security for evacuating refugees. After that, we could see a similar scenario to the one that unfolded for nine months in Nagorno-Karabakh.

Public proclamations by Azeri officials recognising Armenia’s territorial integrity may be misleading, according to Beynamin Poghosyan, a senior fellow on foreign policy at the Applied Policy Research Institute of Armenia, an independent think tank in Yerevan. ‘While publicly recognising Armenia’s sovereignty over Syunik, and dropping demands for exterritorial corridor, Azerbaijan continues to claim that Armenia should provide special conditions to ensure the security of Azerbaijani persons and cargo, travelling via Syunik,’ he said. ‘The wording is quite vague and may provide Azerbaijan opportunities to demand restricted Armenian sovereignty over Syunik.’

Armenia’s dire strategic situation is compounded by the deteriorating relations with Russia, the Caucasian republic’s strategic ally and guarantor. Russia passively looked on as Azerbaijan kept up the pressure on Armenia even after it attained its proclaimed military goals and reconquered Nagorno-Karabakh, which used to be an autonomous region within Soviet Azerbaijan and declared its independence in a referendum in 1991, as the Soviet Union was collapsing.

Since coming to power in the so-called Velvet Revolution of 2018, Armenia’s prime minister Nikol Pashinyan has pursued a policy of democratisation, which has involved fighting the corruption of an old guard closely associated with the Kremlin and seeking closer relations with the West. Indeed, many believe that Russian passivity in the short yet brutal 44-day war may have been punishment for the Pashinyan government’s efforts to consolidate a democratic system in a region where autocracies prevail, Azerbaijan being a case in point. Remarkably, it is a hereditary dictatorship in all but name that has been run almost continuously by an Aliyev since 1969: Heydar (only briefly out of power between 1987 and 1993), and Ilham, who took over from his father upon his death in 2003, and has been in power since. Armenia took a different path in 1991 after gaining independence from a collapsing Soviet Union by installing a fully functioning democracy, a pattern that also defined the three decades of independent life in Nagorno-Karabakh, which held regular presidential and parliamentary elections.

This former officer I spoke to did not mention Russia among Armenia’s partners helping to deter a possible Azerbaijani attack. In a conversation at a military border outpost in Syunik, a lieutenant colonel and other officers also failed to list Russia among possible allies, and made clear that Armenia is relying on its own resources to repel any possible Azeri attack. When asked about Russia, they pointed to a nearby aerial surveillance base that the Russians had vacated a year or so before, moving some of its operations elsewhere along Armenia’s borders with Azerbaijan.

Armenia’s security challenges are exacerbated not only by its own worsening relations with Russia, but also by the Kremlin’s growing dependence on Azerbaijan and Turkey as alternative trade and political partners, while it suffers the crippling sanctions of the European Union and the United States. In a piece written a week after the fall of Nagorno-Karabakh, Thomas de Waal, senior fellow at Carnegie Europe, wrote: ‘Russia, Azerbaijan, and Turkey all have a shared interest in imposing their own version of what the latter two call the Zangezur Corridor with as little Armenian control of the route as possible — and perhaps by force’. According to Aura Sabadus, senior fellow at the Center for European Policy Analysis, Russia, Azerbaijan and its military ally, Turkey, have a common interest in gas supplies. ‘Azerbaijan and Turkey could provide a convenient and covert backdoor for Russian gas, potentially bringing widespread corruption amid opaque dealings with Europe and denting the EU’s ability to confront authoritarian regimes.’

In view of this realignment of alliances, Poghosyan predicts further Armenian resistance to Russian involvement in any potential trade routes. ‘Armenia seeks to reject the role for the Russian border troops in the functioning of the routes, which creates tensions between Armenia and Russia,’ he said. ‘All external actors, Russia, the EU and the US, are interested in restoration of communications including establishment of routes from Azerbaijan to Nakhijevan via Armenia.’ The US and the EU do not want to see any Russian role in the functioning of these routes. ‘In the current circumstances, Armenia should take steps to avoid becoming another battlefield between Russia and the West or “democracy vs authoritarianism”, and take steps to increase defence capacities and capabilities, as well as economic development of Syunik region.’

The main geopolitical and economic goal of the so-called ‘Zangezur Corridor’, says Arpi Topchyan, a defence analyst at Berd, an NGO in Armenia, ‘is to provide a reliable land connection, an umbilical cord for the Russian-Turkish strategic alliance, which will increase the Russian-Turkish economic cooperation on several levels: to formulate far-reaching geopolitical goals,’ she said. ‘The launch of the “Zangezur Corridor” casts great doubt on the economic and geopolitical expediency of the North-South Road: it crosses the path of an alternative route from the Persian Gulf through Armenia to Europe.’

It would also compromise Iran’s geopolitical position, Topchyan believes. ‘Another goal of the “Zangezur Corridor” is to take Iran into a reliable straitjacket, which can be desirable for other foreign players,’ she said. ‘The main question currently being discussed is who will control the operation of the corridor, who will have the key: the main beneficiary and candidate is the Russian Federation, which has taken on the task of imposing the corridor on Armenia.’

According to Topchyan, the ‘Zangezur Corridor’ is vital for Russia as it ensures its continued presence in the South Caucasus. It would also lessen Armenia’s geopolitical significance. ‘Azerbaijan’s threats and possible attack are the instruments of coercion in the hands of Russia,’ she said. ‘With the opening of the “Zangezur Corridor”, Armenia practically loses control over Syunik and becomes uninteresting to everyone, and thus Russia neutralises the last fragments of Armenia’s sovereignty.’

The rising tensions in the Middle East could compromise Armenia’s security even further. The Israeli-Palestinian war raging since Hamas’ attack on 7 October could inflame the region. With Armenia lacking practically any strategic depth, any wider war that aligned Azerbaijani forces — supported by allies Turkey and Israel — against Iran would inevitably threaten Armenia, especially if Russia failed to intervene.

As the distance between Russia and Armenia grows, Armenia is turning to the West. In September, Armenian forces held a minor military exercise with US troops. Operation Eagle Partner involves 87 American soldiers who trained their Armenian peers for peacekeeping missions. Predictably, it provoked a warning by the Kremlin’s foreign minister Sergey Lavrov. Armenia has also declared its intention to sign the Rome Statute, which would expose Putin to extradition should he visit the country.

The post-Soviet security architecture is collapsing in the South Caucasus, with a weakening Russia now mired in the Ukraine war. In a complex geopolitical context, where any move could upset some of the major regional powers, Armenia must juggle its interests with those of much more powerful and mostly hostile neighbours — including Turkey, which exterminated almost its entire Armenian population in 1915. Not only does Turkey vehemently deny the genocide — it is also the main ally and supporter of Azerbaijan, another Turkic country. After the 44-day war — in which the Turkish army took part and its Bayraktar drones were decisive in Azerbaijan’s victory — Turkey returned to the Caucasus for the first time in a century, since the collapse of the Ottoman Empire.

Today only a fraction of what it used to be before the Turkic invasions of the 11th century, Armenia finds itself flanked by a victorious, increasingly bellicose Azerbaijan, armed and supported by Turkey. Any new war in Armenia — a country barely half the size of Ireland, with negative demographic growth and a population of less than 3 million people — could be decisive.