Armenia has told the United Nations that Azerbaijan is carrying out genocide and warning of war in the disputed mountainous region of Nagorno-Karabakh.
Armenia’s foreign ministry said the Armenian-populated city of Stepanakert is running out of food, medicine and fuel after being blockaded by the Azerbaijani security forces for two months.
“The situation has already resulted in a recorded increase in mortality. Today, the people of Nagorno-Karabakh are on the verge of a full-fledged humanitarian catastrophe,”
said the statement, which called for an emergency meeting of the United Nations Security Council.
Stepanakert, with around 120,000 residents, is the largest city in Nagorno-Karabakh. Azerbaijan regained control over large parts of Nagorno-Karabakh after defeating Armenia in a 44-day war that started in September 2020.
Since the war, the de facto regional capital’s main link to Armenia has been along a road through the so-called Lechin corridor. Since December, Azerbaijani environmental demonstrators have blocked the road followed by the establishment of a military checkpoint in mid-June.
The International Red Cross and Russian troops monitoring the 2020 ceasefire until June had been able to deliver aid. But a border skirmish in June between Armenian and Azerbaijani soldiers prompted Azerbaijan’s president, Ilham Aliyev, to tighten the blockade.
Azerbaijan says its checkpoint to Stepanakert is stopping smuggling. It offers access to Stepanarkert via a longer, more complicated route through territory it controls.
The first bilateral war broke out in the early 1990s after the collapse of the Soviet Union and there have been repeated clashes on the undefined border ever since.
Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan claims Russia has failed to uphold its peacekeeping responsibilities and is ignoring Baku’s aggression because it is concentrating on its Ukrainian war.
In May, Pashinyan controversially announced that he would recognise Nagorno-Karabakh as part of Azerbaijan on the condition that its ethnic Armenian population received rights and security guarantees.
But the Nagorno-Karabakh authorities, calling itself the Republic of Arzakh, have refused any proposed integration with Azerbaijan.
Aliyev has also dismissed talk of integration, calling for the Republic of Arzakh to be dissolved and for Armenians in the enclave to be integrated as “normal, loyal citizens” of Azerbaijan.
Observers say Azerbaijan is enriched by new European Union gas contracts and strengthened by security agreements with Turkey and Israel and its victorious 2020 war.
https://www.eurasiatimes.org/en/13/08/2023/armenia-accuses-azerbaijan-of-genocide-over-nagorno-karabakh-blockade/