Author: Emil Lazarian

This analysis by Igor Mirosavljević was originally published by the International and Security Affairs Centre (ISAC), part of the regional initiative Western Balkans Anti-Disinformation Hub. An edited version is republished by Global Voices as part of a partnership agreement.

The re-escalation of the conflict in the Nagorno-Karabakh region in September 2023, which ended with the surrender of Nagorno-Karabakh forces and the establishment of total control over the territory by Azerbaijan, focused increased public attention on the geopolitical dynamics in the South Caucasus region in the media in the Serbian language. Serbian pro-government tabloids pushed the narrative that the sole responsibility for Armenia losing control over the region and the subsequent mass exodus of ethnic Armenians living in Karabakh was the doing of the Armenian pro-Western authorities, their rhetoric and foreign policy moves.

Despite being dubbed as one of the most famous examples of frozen conflict, the dispute over Nagorno-Karabakh has been one of the longest-lasting conflicts in the entire post-Soviet space. Throughout this period, Russia maintained its dominant presence in the region, and played the mediator role in the negotiations between Armenia and Azerbaijan regarding Nagorno-Karabakh. In addition, Armenia was the only post-Soviet state in which Russian influence was persistent and whose security architecture was directly, almost entirely, tied to Russia.

Nevertheless, during the recent tragic events, the Armenian authorities, led by Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan, and a large part of public opinion strongly condemned Russia, with undisguised dissatisfaction and disappointment with the inaction of Russian peacekeeping troops — the contingent on the ground. However, the pro-government and pro-Russian media in Serbia systematically promoted a different narrative.

The most influential Serbian pro-government tabloid, Informer, carried a series of news headlines such as “Drama in Russia! Armenia is preparing a terrible attack on Moscow?! Pashinyan can cause a total disaster with one decision” and “Where was Pashinyan’s army?! He trains with the Americans!” focusing, in particular, on the alleged turn in Armenia’s foreign policy towards the West and the rapprochement with the USA, which also influenced Russia’s different, “reciprocal” approach in the context of the conflict in Karabakh. The tabloid quoted the former Russian president Dmitry Medvedev and one of the Kremlin’s leading propagandists, Vladimir Solovyov, who pointed out that the Armenian authorities turned to the West, which did not provide aid to Armenia or Nagorno-Karabakh, and are now subsequently trying to blame Russia for their defeat.

Screenshots of Serbian language articles ‘Getting closer to the West didn't pay off: Can Azerbaijan and Armenia avoid a new war?’ (RT), ‘Unprecedented betrayal! Big drama in Armenia, merciless showdown with Russia has begun,’ and ‘Why Putin abandoned Armenia?’ ‘Where was Pashinyan’s army?! He trains with the Americans!‘ (Informer). Fair use.

Other media, such as the Republika portal, the online edition of the daily Srpski Telegraf, also focused their “attention” in their reporting on the “betrayal” of Russia by the pro-Western Armenian authorities, accentuating that since Armenia’s moves have angered Moscow, it has no reason to react militarily in the conflict in Nagorno-Karabakh. They noted that “the American army is conducting exercises in Armenia; Armenia’s leadership betrayed Russia a long time ago, and Armenia’s main friends are now Russia’s enemies, France, the EU and the USA (…) the third Karabakh war will not last long.”

Russian media based in Serbia also continued to interpret the events in Nagorno-Karabakh, as well as the subsequent anti-government and anti-Russian protests that rocked Armenia, in a similar manner. The Balkan portal of the Russian state media Russia Today pointed out that “the attempt to get closer to the West did not pay off in the end” and that “the situation does not look good either for Armenians or for their Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan.” RT repeated that the authorities of Armenia were “making their country hostages of the geopolitical games of the West (…) the alleged mistakes of the Russian Federation and the CSTO unconvincingly justify their steps.” They concluded that “due to the inconsistent attitude of the Armenian leadership, which runs after the West and turns its back on trilateral agreements with Russia and Azerbaijan, precious time has been lost during which progress could be made in the peace negotiations.”

The pro-Russian portals Webtribune and Srbin.info have also frequently “promoted” this narrative. In the text entitled “Armenia’s attack on Russia: Expert revealed the main reason for the betrayal” on Webtribune, it is pointed out that “Pashinyan will say and do whatever he wants at the behest of the West (…) the main thing is to solve the problem of pushing Russia out of the South Caucasus.” Srbin.info published the statement of Russian MFA spokesperson Maria Zakharova, in which she stated that it was not Russia that betrayed Armenia but Brussels, which “neither intended to contribute to the ceasefire nor the provision of humanitarian aid.”

Another of the related narratives present in this period was that Russia, although for a long time the guarantor of security, was not able to intervene more actively when Armenia itself changed the reality on the ground and recognized Azerbaijan’s sovereignty over Karabakh. The Serbian edition of Russian Sputnik emphasized that Pashinyan and the official Yerevan government themselves recognized that Nagorno-Karabakh belongs to Azerbaijan in May 2023, expressing their readiness to recognize the territorial integrity of Azerbaijan [under certain conditions], adding that the latest criticism of the Armenian authorities is in the shadow of that event.

Portal Alo quoted Russian President Vladimir Putin as saying that “it was only a matter of time when and how Baku would establish constitutional order in Karabakh after Yerevan recognized Baku’s sovereignty.” The text adds that it was not the decision of Russia but exclusively of the Armenian authorities. RT published a statement from the Kremlin reminding that Russia was under no obligation to protect Nagorno-Karabakh and that such claims are baseless, given the changed status of this area. Portal Informer quoted the editor-in-chief of the Serbian edition of RT, who claimed that the Armenian government refused Russia’s help, “recognized the disputed part of Nagorno-Karabakh, and now complains about it.”

The portal Novi Standard, in a suggestively titled article “Armenian lesson for the Serbs,” emphasized that “Pashinyan and his closest allies accuse Russia of their treachery and incompetence.” The claim that “in a word, when solving the Nagorno-Karabakh issue, Russia had no reason to confront Azerbaijan after Pashinyan’s complete turn to the collective West,” illustratively summarizes the key narratives spread in the Serbian media.

In reality, Russia’s influence as the most important geopolitical actor in the South Caucasus area is weakened, and this potentially opens up space for other major and regional powers, primarily the USA and Turkey, as well as the  EU, which is involved in nearby countries like Georgia and had attempted to negotiate a peace deal between Armenia and Azerbaijan. Even though it's the only foreign power with military forces on the ground, Moscow failed to effectively control the situation in the region, nor to resolve the conflict and stop hostilities. As the Center for Strategic and International Studies writes, Russia’s limited ability to mediate between Armenia and Azerbaijan and prevent the escalation of the conflict in Karabakh is conditioned by Moscow’s complete focus on its war in Ukraine. 

Carnegie Endowment for International Peace noted that since the fall of 2022, Russia's unwillingness to intervene or materialize military aid to Yerevan resulted in a decision by Pashinyan to diversify security partnerships. Only then did Armenia begin changing its security policy with cautious attempts to approach Western countries. This analysis indicated that Moscow’s justifications in the context of its own inertness and political mistakes, including its inability to prevent a humanitarian disaster in Karabakh at the end of September 2023, are unconvincing. The outcome of the conflict was also bad for Russia. “The failure of Russia’s peacekeeping efforts has jeopardized its long-term presence in the South Caucasus,” noted the article.

https://globalvoices.org/2024/01/30/serbian-media-blame-armenian-betrayal-of-russia-for-the-fall-of-nagorno-karabakh/

YEREVAN, GORIS and MEGHRI, Armenia — On Sept. 19, 2023, Narine Mirzoyan had just finished classes at the secondary school where she taught Armenian language and history. “I came home and was changing my clothes,” she said. “It was around 1 o’clock. I took off my blazer and from four sides they started to bomb. And two of my kids were still at school.” Azerbaijani troops had launched a major offensive and were advancing rapidly.

Mirzoyan and her family lived in the village of Ashan, in the breakaway Republic of Artsakh, an ethnic Armenian region of Azerbaijan that had been under Armenian control since Armenia battled Azerbaijan for the territory, also known as Nagorno-Karabakh, after the fall of the Soviet Union, in 1991. Roughly 10 months before the September outbreak, the Azerbaijani government had imposed a siege, depriving the region of food, oil, gas, electricity, Internet and, in some areas, phone service.

Mirzoyan’s 10-year-old daughter, Anna, said she first noticed the effect of the siege when she couldn’t have sugar with her tea in the morning. More food became scarce, and she was forced to do homework by candlelight in notebooks recycled from blank pages of ones from years past.

Panicked but focused, Mirzoyan picked up her children on Sept. 19 at school and took them to a bomb shelter next to a kindergarten, while her husband, Arsene Vartanyan, was attempting to escape military fire at a lookout post near the border with Azerbaijan, which had been attacked as well. About 60 other people from their village and surrounding ones gathered in the kindergarten and the bomb shelter for several days before someone came with enough fuel for the family to fill their car. The villagers — and the Vartanyan/Mirzoyans — left for the regional capital of Stepanakert, a one-hour journey that took all day, where they stayed in a student dormitory.

The next morning, as Azerbaijani forces closed in on Stepanakert, Mirzoyan and her family drove 28 hours to the mountainous town of Goris in the Republic of Armenia, along with more than 100,000 other Armenians from Artsakh who fled their ancestral land. Strollers, suitcases and furniture that Armenian families couldn’t take with them lined the empty streets of Stepanakert, known as Khankendi to Azerbaijanis; in some cases, cooked meals were left on kitchen tables, a testament to how fast the Armenians had to flee the coming Azerbaijani assault. The government of the Republic of Artsakh officially resigned on Sept. 28, ending more than 2,000 years of continuous Armenian presence in the region.

Both the Armenian national government and the European Union labeled the forced displacement of the entire Armenian population “ethnic cleansing.” Alice Wairimu Nderitu, the United Nations’ special adviser on the prevention of genocide, said on Oct. 10, 2023, “I call on all efforts to be made to ensure the protection and human rights of the ethnic Armenian population who remain in the area and of those who have left, including the right to return, which should be prioritized.” Yet Nderitu’s statement has had seemingly little effect on the conflict between Armenia and Azerbaijan.

Other experts went further than Nderitu, however, placing the violence within the long history of Armenia’s suffering.

“The people of Artsakh were the only group of Armenians until September of this year that had never been moved off their land,” said Eric Hacopian, a political consultant and analyst in Yerevan, Armenia’s capital. “It’s the second genocide, 180 years later, pretty much done by the same people, with the same onlookers.”

Former International Criminal Court prosecutor Luis Moreno-Ocampo used the same language even before the September military offensive, writing in August: “there is an ongoing Genocide against 120,000 Armenians living in Nagorno-Karabakh, also known as Artsakh.”

Azerbaijan denies such claims. President Ilham Aliyev has framed his government’s actions as counterterrorism. “The terrorists were punished,” he said in an address to the nation on Sept. 20, 2023. “The bloodsucking leeches have already been completely exposed and surrendered.”

Although 77 percent of the Nagorno-Karabakh region was populated by ethnic Armenians by the fall of the Soviet Union, the territory remained within the internationally recognized borders of Azerbaijan. Armenia took control of the land in the First Nagorno-Karabakh War, from 1988 to 1994, after the population there voted to secede from Azerbaijan and unify with the nascent Armenian state. The fighting was vicious, and both sides said the other committed massacres. The result was that all ethnic Armenians fled Azerbaijan and Nakhichevan, an exclave on Armenia’s southwestern border, and all ethnic Azeris fled Nagorno-Karabakh.

Aliyev has said on numerous occasions that his recent actions were meant to restore sovereignty lost in the First Nagorno-Karabakh War and to enact justice for violence against Armenia.

What can the UN do?

Armenia, a landlocked country of 2.8 million people, has turned to the UN and its wide-ranging agencies and programs for some help. The UN system’s overall piecemeal response to Armenia’s requests, however, reflect how hard it can be for a small country — stuck in conflict, with few resources and ambivalent alliances with big powers, like Russia — to advocate for itself successfully. Lacking a single go-to resource in the UN to manage its enormous needs, Armenia must fend for itself.

Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan presented a “Crossroads of Peace” plan in October. It would open seven border crossings with Türkiye and Azerbaijan, stipulating that “all infrastructures, including roads, railways, airways, pipelines, cables and power lines, operate under the sovereignty and jurisdiction of the countries through which they pass.” But Azerbaijan has made counterdemands that could breach Armenia’s territorial sovereignty. So far, UN mediation is nonexistent.

Armenia made many appeals to the International Court of Justice in the run-up to September 2023, for example, to stop the blockade on Nagorno-Karabakh. On Feb. 22, 2023, the ICJ ruled that the “Republic of Azerbaijan shall, pending the final decision in the case and in accordance with its obligations under the International Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination, take all measures at its disposal to ensure unimpeded movement of persons, vehicles and cargo along the Lachin Corridor in both directions.”

The binding ruling was reaffirmed in an order in July, but the UN Security Council, divided politically between the United States and Russia, did not enforce it. Although France, another permanent Council  member, showed interest in introducing a resolution on the matter in the fall, the Oct. 7 Hamas attacks on Israel and Israeli response on Gaza became the top diplomatic priority for Western nations. The Armenian crisis was sidelined.

Armenia’s deputy foreign minister, Vahan Kostanyan, told PassBlue in an interview in November that his country was working with the UN to help Artsakh refugees, who number about 100,000.

“We have been closely cooperating with our international partners, UN agencies and different countries,” he said, talking from Yerevan, the capital. “With UNHCR [UN High Commissioner for Refugees], we made a joint humanitarian appeal to allocate some money; according to the UNHCR estimations, for the first six months, at least $97 million will be needed.” Yet there is no updated information on the agency’s website about the appeal.

Beyond the urgent needs of the refugees, the government is working with the UN refugee entity and other partners to manage the long-term needs of integrating the 100,000 people into Armenia.

“We need to understand how we’re going to accommodate people and provide long-term shelter,” Kostanyan said. “So big housing projects should be implemented, projects to increase opportunities in our labor market, to do some additional competence trainings. There are working groups set up in the government, and two deputy prime ministers are in charge of different components: one for realization of the projects we have and the other for donor coordination. We’re working closely with UNHCR on this matter.”

Beyond refugee integration, Armenia is working with the UN more reliably on development matters. “The UN is a key development partner for Armenia when it comes to implementation of the Sustainable Development Goals,” Kostanyan said. “Armenia is planning to submit its voluntary national review on the SDGs. We are one of the champions because not many states are already submitting the third one. UN is a partner for us in the fight against corruption.”

Kostanyan said that the country would run for a seat in the UN Human Rights Council, which Armenia thinks will help it navigate the fallout from the September war in Nagorno-Karabakh.

“We were a member from 2020 to 2022,” he said of the Human Rights Council. “Now we’re going to run for another term in the Council in the upcoming year, because we believe this is an important platform for us and in general for tackling human rights issues. We believe that we have quite a good record on human rights protection, democracy and rule of law, which makes us a credible candidate.”

“The UN Human Rights Council has big importance for us,” he added. “We believe that some of the issues are very relevant and they should be discussed at the Council.”

While the ethnic Armenian refugees displaced in 2023 find their footing amid severe shortages in housing, jobs, education and other sectors in Armenia, the government and its population are concerned that Azerbaijan, bolstered by its resounding military success, could strike again. Azerbaijan has faced few consequences on the international stage for the accusation of ethnic cleansing, which some experts argue encourages more violence.

The country did not lift the blockade on the Lachin corridor — a mountainous road in Azerbaijan linking Nagorno-Karabakh to Armenia — after the ICJ ruling. Despite the forced displacement that occurred in September, Azerbaijan was named in December as host country of COP29, the UN’s annual climate change conference, to be held this year, conferring international legitimacy, if not acceptance, of its recent actions.

Armenia’s borders with both Türkiye in the west and Azerbaijan in the west and the east have been closed since 1993. Aliyev has said on numerous occasions about opening the “Zangezur Corridor,” referring to a land corridor along the Iranian border in Armenia’s southern Syunik province, which separates Azerbaijan proper from its landlocked western exclave, Nakhichevan.

During an April 2021 interview with state TV, Aliyev stated that “we are implementing the Zangezur corridor, whether Armenia likes it or not. If they do, it will be easier for us to implement; if not, we will enforce it. Just as before and during the war, I said that they must get out of our lands or we will expel them by force. And so it happened. The same will apply to the Zangezur corridor.”

On Jan. 11, 2024, Aliyev reiterated the claims, saying on state TV that Armenia “must give us unimpeded passage between Zangilan and Ordubad. This is their obligation. I have already said and I would like to say again that cargo, citizens and vehicles traveling from Azerbaijan to Azerbaijan should pass freely without being subjected to any inspections or customs administration.” Zangilan and Orbudad are towns on the eastern and western Azerbaijani borders with Armenia.

Armenia’s current borders were defined after the Soviet Union’s collapse. Although they resemble the borders of the former Armenian Soviet Socialist Republic, Armenia’s borders with Azerbaijan have never been fully demarcated. The territory itself, like the rest of the southern Caucasus region, was the site of centuries of battles for supremacy among Armenians, Türks, Persians, Arabs, Byzantines and Mongols.

Today, a confluence of interests among Azerbaijan, Türkiye and Russia has laid claim to a “Zangezur” corridor. The ninth clause of the 2020 Nagorno-Karabakh ceasefire agreement, signed on Nov. 9, 2020, by Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan, President Aliyev and Russian President Vladimir Putin, indicated: “The Republic of Armenia shall guarantee the security of transport connections between the western regions of the Republic of Azerbaijan and the Nakhichevan Autonomous Republic in order to arrange unobstructed movement of persons, vehicles and cargo in both directions. The Border Guard Service of the Russian Federal Security Service shall be responsible for overseeing the transport connections.”

The clause is the documented basis for a joint Azerbaijani, Russian and Türkish push to reopen the Soviet-era railway that ran from Baku, Azerbaijan’s capital, to Nakhichevan (through Armenia) and force the railway and a corresponding road to be under the control of the Russian Federal Security Service (formerly, KGB). But with Azerbaijan having violated the rest of the ceasefire agreement when it seized Nagorno-Karabakh in September, Armenia has rejected the idea of establishing a “corridor” on its own soil that would be outside its control.

A hollowed-out railway station remains in the far southern Armenian town of Meghri, near the border with Iran and Nakhichevan, where thousands of passengers from across the Soviet Union used to transit. Now, broken-down trains, emblazoned with the Communist Party hammer and sickle symbols, gather cobwebs in the valley along the Aras River, which forms the border between Armenia and Iran. The ticket office is still intact, while tickets from over 30 years ago gather dust and a broken monument of a Soviet woman faces the rusted tracks.

On a hill overlooking Meghri, along a rocky path dotted with pomegranate trees and houses with balconies hung with vertical strings of persimmons drying in the sun, sit two stone structures built about a hundred meters and 200 years apart. One was built in the 1700s, and the other in the early-20th century, as lookout points to spot Ottoman and Persian invaders. Today, the lookouts have renewed relevance as the threat of attack from Azerbaijan and the Azerbaijani exclave Nakhichevan, behind the western mountain range nestling the Meghri valley, looms large.

Azerbaijan has long desired a physical connection between its main territory and Nakhichevan, and Türkiye wants a link between its own country and Azerbaijan, connecting the two ethnic-Türkish countries while giving Türkiye easy access to ports in the Caspian Sea and the larger Türkic world. Analysts see many reasons for Russia’s eagerness to control a land corridor across Armenia, including a secure, sanctions-evading transport path for sensitive goods.

“There is one type of goods that is too risky to trade through the Black Sea, where there are NATO countries, there is Ukraine, there is Georgia, etc,” said Areg Kochinyan, president of the Yerevan-based Research Center on Security Policy think tank. “And that’s weapons and ammunition. To do that, you would need a connection between Turkey and Azerbaijan and through Azerbaijan to Russia. That’s exactly why Russians are so interested in controlling this part of Armenia to have secure land road connecting themselves with the Turks.”

A Russian betrayal?

Most people in Armenia now view Russia with extreme suspicion after what they consider as a painful betrayal by the biggest regional power. According to the 2020 Nagorno-Karabakh ceasefire agreement, 1,960 Russian peacekeepers were deployed to protect the demarcation line and the Lachin corridor, the only route that supplied goods to Nagorno-Karabakh. Those same Russian peacekeepers stood by when Azerbaijan seized the corridor and Azerbaijani troops marched on Stepanakert, pushing the ethnic Armenians into exile. For many people who fled, the betrayal was personal.

“For the last 70 years, we believed Russia has been our closest ally, so that’s where the disappointment comes in,” Syunik’s deputy governor, Hayk Harutyunyan, said in an interview.

Narine Mirzoyan, who escaped with her family from Nagorno-Karabakh in September, is more realistic. “When the Russians came, people were saying that there wouldn’t be any war because of Russians,” she said. “But as they say, blessed is the person who relies on God, and cursed is the person who relies on man.”

Mirzoyan is now living with her family in Goris, a town of 10,000 people, and where the 100,000 or so refugees transited though in a matter of days in their exodus from Nagorno-Karabakh. Characteristic of the southern Syunik region, old Russian Ladas ply Goris’s tree-lined cobblestone streets, near the Zangezur Mountains.

Many households grow their own fruit, like persimmons, apricots and figs. In August, Goris is home to an annual mulberry festival. Despite the sudden influx of people from Nagorno-Karabakh, no refugee camps were set up in the village to accommodate the newcomers because something more welcoming kicked in: Armenia’s solidarity system during national distress. The exodus illustrated both the deep suffering the Armenian people continue to endure, experts and residents say, and the quick mobilization of the nation to ensure the safety of those who needed emergency shelter.

“It’s basically the picture of our society that we didn’t let the refugee camp thing happen,” Areg Kochinyan of the Yerevan think tank said.

Marietta, the owner of an Airbnb in Goris who offers guests warm flatbread with diced herbs and greens as well as tea, hosted a family of 12 from Nagorno-Karabakh for 25 days in her flat in a Soviet-era apartment building. The walls in her apartment are covered in messages from contented visitors from around the world. She met the family of 12 when war broke out in 2020, after the father of the family died in a fuel-depot explosion and the family moved to Goris temporarily. They all became extended members of Marietta’s own family over time, and she called the Goris kids every day for three years, after they returned home. When war came again, the family sought refuge with Marietta again. “Every person had to do that, and they would do that,” she said.

Arpine Hovhannisyan, a psychologist in Goris who runs the Cooperation Arch, an organization providing services to older people, became a first responder to help the flow of refugees, ensuring they had beds, clothes and food when they arrived. During the few days that the refugees flooded in and the weeks thereafter, she worked up to 24 hours at a time “and didn’t feel tired,” she said. “When you come home, you look at the clock all the time to see when you can go back, because you know that every second that you are there, you can help with something.”

Feeling abandoned 

For the people forced to abandon their homes, the wounds remain open. Many of the older generation fought in the First Nagorno-Karabakh War, and almost everyone had already lost members of their families or had been seriously affected by conflict. Some had been displaced many times and must find new homes and livelihoods.

“Their whole life they’ve been going into a bunker, trying to build a house even if it might get destroyed at some point,” Valentin Mahou-Hekinian, the south Caucasus regional coordinator for the French NGO Médecins du Monde, said. “So, it’s not a population that was living peacefully and suddenly a bomb arrived, and they’re traumatized. It’s deeper than that.”

The pain has led in many cases to anger at an international system perceived as rubber-stamping ethnic cleansing.

“We believed in international law. We believed in human rights,” Gegham Stepanyan, the current human rights ombudsman of the exiled government of Artsakh, said. “We were organizing huge demonstrations in Stepanakaert, gathering 60 to 70,000 people, which is more than 50 percent of our population of Artsakh/Nagorno Karabakh. And we believed that maybe it can change something, maybe it will change the stance of international committee, maybe they will see and realize that these people want to live freely. It didn’t change anything in this immoral and unprincipled international order. The laws are just dust that everyone is blowing on our eyes.”

Another recent ICJ ruling, issued Nov. 17, 2023, ordered Azerbaijan to “ensure that persons who have left Nagorno-Karabakh after 19 September 2023 and who wish to return to Nagorno-Karabakh are able to do so in a safe, unimpeded and expeditious manner,” although Armenians from the region say they do not feel safe under Azerbaijani rule.

“We prefer to leave everything that we have — everything, literally,” Stepanyan the ombudsman said. “My father is a refugee from Fizuli [in Azerbaijan], he came to Stepanakert, he built three houses, he had a shop in Stepanakert, and we left everything there. Now we have nothing here in Yerevan. But we prefer to come to Yerevan and live here and lose everything than to be subjugated. This is the core issue.”

Vahan Kostanyan, the Armenian deputy foreign minister, has implored various UN bodies to play a greater role in resolving the conflict but his efforts have been met with limited results.

“The UN Secretariat and UN agencies have quite big portfolios and toolboxes that can be helpful to address both short-term and long-term issues with people from Nagorno-Karabakh,” Artak Begralyan, the former human rights ombudsman of the exiled government of Artsakh, agreed.

“Given, for example, the Kosovo precedent, or other examples, that based on the right to self-determination and the genocide history, and the need of prevention of a new genocide, it’s important to have, for example, UN peacekeepers in Nagorno-Karabakh, UN administration in Nagorno-Karabakh and a transitional justice, to have final settlement of the conflict,” he said.

“At the lower level, there are lots of things to do by the UN, including a mission to Nagorno-Karabakh to record human rights violations, humanitarian support — both emergency response and long-term response — some donor conferences, protection of our cultural heritage, implementation of the ICJ orders,” he added. So far, these plans have not been enacted, possibly because of direct or implied pressure from Russia, but also because Western powers view Armenia as a lower priority that can be sacrificed for crises they deem more pressing.

“Despite Armenia’s repeated warnings about the need for concrete and practical action, including the dispatching of a UN interagency needs-assessment and fact-finding mission to Nagorno-Karabakh, the United Nations failed to respond to the numerous and gross violations of the international humanitarian law and human rights law,” a spokesperson for the Armenian foreign ministry told PassBlue.

As a member of the Kremlin-led Collective Security Treaty Organization (CSTO) and host to 10,000 Russian troops, half of whom are stationed at a base in Gyumri, a city in northwest Armenia, and the other half scattered around the county, including the borders with Iran and Azerbaijan, Armenia remains — on paper — a Russian ally. But politicians and analysts say this relationship is likely to end soon.

“The security architecture and the security philosophy that we had didn’t work,” Kostanyan the deputy foreign minister told PassBlue. “When our sovereign territory was attacked, the traditional partners and the CSTO were silent. They didn’t even come up with a political statement that our sovereign territory was attacked. In the same way, Russian peacekeepers, who had a duty clearly put on paper to protect the people of Nagorno-Karabakh from existential threat, acted as an observer when ethnic cleansing happened.”

The UN Security Council held a session on the expulsion of ethnic Armenians from the region on Sept. 21, 2023, but never issued a formal statement.

Miroslav Jenca, the assistant secretary-general for Europe, Central Asia and Americas in the UN Department of Political and Peacebuilding Affairs, told the Council that day: “The developments of the past few days should be seen in the context of the broader pattern of regular ceasefire violations. A genuine dialogue between the Government of Azerbaijan and representatives of the region . . . is the only sustainable way forward.” He emphasized the UN Secretariat’s readiness to support peace efforts, conduct humanitarian needs assessments and provide assistance.

But a spokesperson for the Armenian foreign ministry told PassBlue that “the UN Department of Political and Peacebuilding Affairs has not been engaged in organizing peace negotiations between Armenia and Azerbaijan.”

Tilting westward

The Pashinyan government, which rose to power on the back of a popular democratic movement against a corrupt Kremlin-allied administration, has intensified a popular Western pivot after Russia’s inaction in Nagorno-Karabakh.

“I don’t think that this government has any possibility to go back to the Russians,” Areg Kochinyan, the think tank analyst in Yerevan said. “Armenia is fully in. Armenia wants as much cooperation and as much integration into the Euro-Atlantic community as possible.”

According to numerous analysts and politicians with direct knowledge of the situation, Western powers are slowing Armenia’s integration into the Euro-Atlantic orbit because their attention is more focused on the raging Gaza and Ukraine wars. Some in the West are also concerned that a hasty Armenian exit from Russian-led organizations like CSTO, CIS (Commonwealth of Independent States) and the Eurasian Union could create even more problems between Russia and the West.

Nonetheless, the Western pivot “is going at a pace that’s unimaginable,” Eric Hacopian the Yerevan analyst said.

Before Pashinyan was prime minister, it was difficult to imagine Armenian defense officials contemplating weapons purchases outside the CSTO framework. But in October 2023, Armenia bought radars and signed an agreement to buy Mistral air defense missiles from France, which is home to the largest Armenian diaspora in Europe. In November, France shipped at least 21 armored personnel carriers to Armenia.

Aliyev refused to attend a EU-led peace negotiations in October, citing France’s presence at the talks and the “anti-Azerbaijani atmosphere.” The talks have not moved forward.

Aliyev said in November that the sale of French military equipment “prepares the ground for the start of new wars in our region.” Azerbaijan expelled two French diplomats in late December, while France expelled two Azerbaijani diplomats soon after.

Unsurprisingly, the Kremlin has reacted angrily to Armenia’s cozier relations with Western countries. In September, Russia’s foreign ministry issued a statement claiming that “a frenzied anti-Russian campaign has swept the Armenian media at the behest of the authorities.”

It added: “We are convinced that the Armenian leadership is making a huge mistake by deliberately attempting to sever Armenia’s multifaceted and centuries-old ties with Russia, making the country a hostage to Western geopolitical games.”

Armenia is trying to strike a balance between what it sees as its future and the geopolitical realities of the south Caucasus, where Russia’s proximity and influence is an enduring fact. Some days, Armenia’s peace plan, proposed in October, looks like a well-thought-out strategy that could end the hostilities, observers say. Sometimes relations with Russia look like they’re on the mend, for example, when Russian foreign minister Sergey Lavrov said in a change of tone in late December that “all difficulties [in relations between Russia and Armenia] are temporary and will be overcome if political will is present.”

Other days, the Western turn looks like it could risk antagonizing Russia further and threaten the nearly century-long security ally for a Western alliance that has never lent its full support to Armenia and could drop its budding closeness if more urgent matters arise, like EU countries securing Azerbaijani gas or making a deal with President Recep Tayyip Erdogan of NATO member Türkiye.

“We are too eastern for the West, and seen as traitors in the Russian world,” Syunik deputy governor Harutyunyan said.

Azerbaijan has become more important to the West since it began exploiting major oil and gas deposits in its territory in the mid-1990s. Since the start of full-scale the war in Ukraine, in February 2022, European leaders have courted Aliyev for more fuel output to Europe. Azerbaijan is also Israel’s only Muslim-majority ally in the region. Israeli weaponry and intelligence systems aided Azerbaijan in its recent takeover of Nagorno-Karabakh, while Azerbaijan provides Israel with 40 percent of its energy needs. Israel also uses the country as a safe haven to spy on Azerbaijan’s southern neighbor and Israel’s mortal enemy: Iran.

The Armenian government is scouting for potential allies and partners around the world. “The Armenian spirit is strong, but if you as a human can lift 60 kilograms and they give you 100 kilograms, you won’t be able to lift it. You will fall under it. Now, we are knocking at everyone’s door and asking to lift this 100-kilogram weight together,” Bagrat Zakaryan, the mayor of Meghri, situated near Iran, said. (Relations between Iran and Armenia are friendly.)

Armenia has found a willing partner in India, which is looking for a shipping route for its goods to the Black Sea and to counter Azerbaijan’s growing alliance with Pakistan. Since 2022, Armenia has bought rocket launchers, artillery systems, ammunition, drones and anti-drone systems from Indian defense companies. The Armenian defense minister visited the United Arab Emirates in November 2023 with the goal of “developing defense cooperation,” while in September, Armenian troops conducted joint exercises with American soldiers in Armenia.

Its defense rebuild is underway, but reshaping a modern military is a multiple-year project and time is a luxury the country can’t afford as it contends with its increasingly antagonistic neighbors. “Our solutions are a midterm or long-term perspective, while our problems are of short-term perspective,” Areg Kochinyan the analyst said. “We have the money, we have the will, we have the allies to build up our capabilities. We just don’t have the time.”

Knowing that the country is challenged on the battlefield for at least for a few more years, the Armenian government is pushing hard for its Crossroads of Peace deal. Besides proposing to open seven border crossings with Türkiye and Azerbaijan and stipulating issues of crucial infrastructure, the plan states that “each country, through its state institutions, ensures border, customs control and security of all the infrastructures,” signaling a clear rejection of the Zangezur corridor.

Although Pashinyan has called the peace plan “realistic,” Aliyev has ruled out any deal that doesn’t include the Zangezur corridor. He stated to the press on Jan. 11 that “people and goods from Azerbaijan to Azerbaijan must pass through without any inspection. Otherwise, Armenia will forever remain a dead end. If the route I mentioned is not opened, we do not intend to open the border with Armenia in any other place.”

Another major stumbling block is that Pashinyan’s administration no longer trusts Russia as a guarantor of any pact.

Top Armenian officials continue to say that peace is possible, yet few people on the ground share that faith.

“Azerbaijan and Turkey are not interested in peace with Armenia. They don’t want Armenia to exist and Armenians to exist as a subject of international law,” Artak Begralyan, the former human rights ombudsman for the exiled Artsakh government, said. “That’s why their policy, even the peace agreement, if it’s signed, will be a way to reach their strategic goal just didn’t happen a few months ago.”

Certainty is missing. “There is a lack of trust on both sides, and I don’t think we will have any positive steps towards that in the near future because the generations that remember both what Azerbaijan did to Armenians, and people living in Azerbaijan who remember their relatives who were killed during the war with Azerbaijan by Armenians,” Harutyunyan of Syunik said.

Many Armenians view Azerbaijan as an extension of Türkiye and the recent siege as the latest bout of ethnic Türkish aggression in the centuries-long history of violence in the region. Some refer to “Turks” when speaking both of Türkish and Azerbaijani people and do not hide their animosity. “I will die if Turks come take over my home and drink tea in my home. And if I’m dead, I will turn over in my grave,” Georgy Mkrtchyan, an 80-year-old retiree living in a village outside Meghri, said.

Vladimir Vardanov, the founder and director of VOMA, a Yerevan group that trains civilians in military practices, uses similarly visceral language to connect recent events to the past.

“The Caspian Turks are our opponents, but the real enemies are Ankara Turks,” he said. “We are dangerous to them because we might ask for what they stole from us back.” Vardanov was referring to the 1916 Armenian genocide, when Ottomans killed up to 1.5 million Armenians and took their homes, land, businesses and money. The official residence of the Turkish vice president, for example (which was the Turkish president’s villa from 1923-2014), was a mansion owned by an Armenian family that was seized after the family fled during the genocide.

Some analysts believe another Azerbaijani attack on Armenia will come soon because Azerbaijan knows that the window of opportunity won’t last and that Russia strongly favors establishing the Zangezur corridor. Analyst Areg Kochinyan argued that a potential action might not be an all-out invasion of southern Armenia but repeated incursions elsewhere in the country. That would enable Russia to grab a mediator role and push for control of the land corridor.

“It’s harder for me to imagine Turkey invading the internationally recognized territory of Armenia,” Kochinyan said. “But Azerbaijan invading other parts and forcing us to ask for the help from the Russians and Russians putting this demand, ‘We will help you, but you have to adopt the corridor’ — this is the way that they’re going to work with it.”

The US is one of the few centers of power that can block Russia from forcing the corridor to be established. The US has condemned Azerbaijan for its action in Nagorno-Karabakh but stopped short of sanctioning the country. In late November, however, the US Senate passed the Armenian Protection Act, which blocks President Joe Biden from issuing a waiver that would give Azerbaijan security help.

For Zakaryan, the mayor of Meghri, the rejection of a Russian, Türkish and Azerbaijani land corridor through Armenia is existential. Armenia has its borders closed with two of its four immediate neighbors, and if Russia controlled its southern border with Iran, it could asphyxiate Armenia.

“The 10-month blockade of Artsakh — it’s the same program that they want to do in Armenia, but on a bigger scale,” Zakaryan said. “The same way they forcefully removed Armenians from Nakhichevan, which is right here behind the mountain, the same happened in Kars, in Ardahan, 200 years ago. History keeps repeating itself without being punished.”

Zakaryan asserted that he was going nowhere. The sweetness of the fruits of Meghri “will become bitter in the mouth for Russia, Turkey and Azerbaijan,” he said. “Meghri must not become a territory controlled by them. We don’t want territories from anyone, we are enough with our territories. We are ready to defend our territories.”

Marietta, the Airbnb owner who hosted Artsakh refugees for weeks, put it plainly. “We don’t need bread, doesn’t need anything else. We make everything ourselves,” she said. “Armenians just need peace.”

This is the second story in a new series this year on small states and multilateralism at the UN, basing “small states” on a country’s population (using the World Bank list or Forum of Small States members or other factors like climate and economic vulnerabilities). The first story featured an interview with the president of the General Assembly. The project is financed by Open Society Foundations.

Joe Penney is a writer, filmmaker and photographer who lives in Brooklyn, N.Y., and Lagos. He directed a documentary, “Sun of the Soil: The Story of Mansa Musa,” about the reign of Mali’s 14th-century king. Penney’s articles and essays have been published by The Intercept, The New York Times, Quartz, Reuters and Paris journals. He was West African photo bureau chief for Reuters, and his pictures have appeared in Geo, Jeune Afrique, Le Monde, The Guardian, The Los Angeles Times, The New York Times, The Washington Post, The Wall Street Journal and Time, among others. He has photographed presidential elections in Guinea, Guinea-Bissau, Mali, Mauritania, Nigeria, Senegal and Sierra Leone as well as the 2012 coup in Mali and the French military intervention in 2013, Mauritanian refugee camps, mining sites in Niger, migrants in the Sahel, counterterrorism campaigns in Cameroon, the 2013-2014 conflict in Central African Republic and the people’s coup in Burkina Faso in 2014. Penney co-founded Sahelien.com, a news company covering the Sahel region, in 2013. In Africa, he has lived in Ivory Coast, Mali and Senegal. He graduated from McGill University in Montreal and speaks English, French and Spanish.

https://www.passblue.com/2024/01/30/armenia-finds-piecemeal-help-from-the-un-to-manage-azerbaijans-aggression-it-says/

Before fleeing Nagorno-Karabakh, Lilit Sargsyan managed to save two “sacred” heirlooms: a family-woven carpet, now ripped with age, and earrings crafted with silver coins from her great grandmother’s taraz, a traditional Armenian headpiece.

The 36-year-old single mother and school teacher was among the 150,000 indigenous Armenians forcibly displaced from their homeland in late September, when Azerbaijan violated a ceasefire brokered in 2020 to launch a military offensive on the territory, which is internationally recognised as part of its borders.

“The first thing that affected me mentally was that road, which seemed like a death march,” Sargsyan told openDemocracy. “It was like burying Artsakh [the Armenian name for Nagorno-Karabakh].”

YEREVAN. Jan 30 (Interfax) – Armenian parliamentary Chairman Alen Simonyan believes the country needs a new national anthem and amended coat of arms.

"It's obvious to me that the Republic of Armenia's national anthem should be changed sooner or later. It should be Armenian, it should have some relation to our state and Armenian music, and it should comply with anthem rules. I don't insist that it should be replaced by the music of the great Aram Khachaturyan [a prominent Armenian and Soviet composer and author of the Armenian Soviet Republic's anthem], which, in my view, is excellent and as Armenian as it can only be, but obviously, the anthem of foreign origin needs to be replaced," Simonyan wrote on Telegram.

The current Armenian anthem is based on a verse by Mikayel Nalbandian titled 'The Song of an Italian Girl', written in 1859.

Simonyan also called for discussing amendments to Armenia's coat of arms.

"At least Armenia can't be underwater, which was a punishment for humankind. A lion can't look like a facebook smiley, and a sword defending Armenia can't be chained," Simonyan said.

Armenia's coat of arms depicts the Deluge near the foot of Mount Ararat.

Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan proposed changing the country's national anthem in June 2023.

"People regularly address me on that, I also feel that way […] I have no definitive conclusion. The official lyrics of our current anthem end in death. The ideology is right, I have no problems with the text, but the anthem concludes with a line about death, a picture of death," he said.

As for Armenia's coat of arms, it has nothing to do with contemporary Armenia, he said.

"What is depicted there? Noah's Ark on Mount Ararat, and the coats of arms of four Armenian dynasties. Looking at the coat of arms, I wonder: What relation does it have to us? After all, we adopted it in 1991. How is it related to the state founded in 1991? What is it about? Looking at its center, you can see Noah's Ark on Mount Ararat and the current territory of the Republic of Armenia, which is underwater," Pashinyan said.

The Armenian coat of arms also has a picture of a lion, "which hasn't been part of Armenia's natural habitat for ages," Pashinyan said.

Armenian prime minister Nikol Pashinyan, accompanied by senior ministers, visited Georgia on Friday (26 January) for meetings with prime minister Irakli Garibashvili and senior Georgian officials.

Garibashvili and  Pashinyan on Friday discussed the “fruitful” bilateral ties after signing an agreement on upgrading them to a strategic co-operation. In a face-to-face meeting in Tbilisi before the launch of an Intergovernmental Economic Cooperation Commission session at the Government office, Garibashvili expressed confidence the new deal would strengthen the bilateral cooperation, the Georgian Government press office said. 

In his remarks, Garibashvili noted the two states had “always been strategic friends and partners”, adding “this reality has officially been signed today”. “We discussed important matters concerning the existing relations, partnership, and cooperation between the two countries in all directions”, he said.

We have a very good partnership, relationship, cooperation in all directions and de facto, it can be said that we were already strategic friends and strategic partners. Today, it can be said, this reality has been formalised, and we officially signed a cooperation agreement on strategic partnership”

Garibashvili also called Georgia and Armenia “traditionally [and] historically very strong allies” and “friends, not just neighbours”.

Security considerations in the region and wider world were among the issues discussed, with the Georgian Prime Minister pointing to the significance of “supporting peace and stability” in the South Caucasus, noting such efforts would unlock “fresh opportunities” for the region.

He added:

We observe the ongoing dialogue between Azerbaijan and Armenia [to resolve the long-running dispute between the states over the Nagorno-Karabakh region] with great optimism. I wish to convey our hope that Armenia and Azerbaijan will expeditiously reach a peace agreement, undoubtedly contributing to the reinforcement and sustenance of the prevailing peace in the region -  an imperative for our nations. 

The meeting also acknowledged Georgia's “pivotal role and efforts” in promoting peace, including with its hosting of a meeting between the PMs of Armenia and Azerbaijan in Tbilisi last year, with the efforts aimed at resolving their long-running conflict over the disputed Nagorno-Karabakh region.