YEREVAN, SEPTEMBER 28, ARMENPRESS. Analysis shows that no Armenian will be left in Nagorno-Karabakh in the coming days, Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan warned Thursday.
“The exodus of Armenians from Nagorno-Karabakh continues as a result of the policy of ethnic cleansing carried out by Azerbaijan. Analysis shows that no Armenian will be left in NK in the coming days. This is a direct act of ethnic cleansing and [dispossession], and what we’ve been warning about the international community for a long time. The statements made by various international actors condemning ongoing ethnic cleansings in NK are important, but if no concrete actions follow these statements will be viewed only for creating a moral statistics for history,” PM Pashinyan said.
He warned that various countries, by simply making statements and not taking action, are trying to have an opportunity to separate themselves from this crime, in order to then be able to say ‘well, we had condemned it.’
“If no relevant political and legal decisions follow the statements on condemning it, the condemnations become acts of giving consent to what’s happening. Regarding the Government of Armenia, our primary duty today is to receive our brothers and sisters forcibly displaced from NK with the utmost care and ensure their urgent needs are met,” Pashinyan said.
Azerbaijan and “brother ally” Turkey turned up the heat on embattled Armenia on September 25, hinting that they may be set to push hard for Yerevan to agree to a land bridge across Armenian territory that would link their two countries.
As Armenia struggled to deal with the mass exodus of ethnic-Armenians fleeing the Nagorno-Karabakh enclave in the wake of last week’s decisive one-day military offensive conducted by Azerbaijan, Turkey’s President Recep Tayyip Erdogan pointedly met Azerbaijani counterpart Ilham Aliyev for the opening of a newly modernised military installation in Azerbaijan’s Nakhchivan exclave—the territory holds great importance in that Baku wants to carve a land corridor across Armenia from the main part of Azerbaijan to Nakhchivan, which borders Turkey.
Azerbaijan and Turkey—which often refer to their two countries as “two states, one nation”—insist Armenia promised to accept such a corridor in the Russian-brokered ceasefire talks that ended the 44-day Second Nagorno-Karabakh War in late 2020, something that Yerevan denies.
At a joint news conference following their meeting, at which neither strongman took any questions, Aliyev lamented how Soviet-era authorities had decided that, part of what he said should have been territory belonging to the Azerbaijani Soviet republic, was land belonging to the Armenian Soviet republic.
“The land link between the main part of Azerbaijan and Nakhchivan was thus cut off,” complained Aliyev, as reported by Reuters.
The corridor, if built, would stretch across Armenia’s southern Syunik province. Both Azerbaijan and Nato member Turkey refer to it as the Zangezur Corridor.
Addressing the UN General Assembly in New York on September 19, the very day Azerbaijan invaded ethnic-Armenian-controlled Karabakh, Erdogan referred to the desired land link, saying: “We expect a comprehensive peace agreement between the two countries [Azerbaijan and Armenia] as soon as possible and for promises to be quickly fulfilled, especially on the opening of the Zangezur corridor.”
Aliyev has since the last Karabakh war occasionally become rather bellicose about his demand for the corridor. In 2021, he threatened to create it “whether Armenia likes it or not”.
However, a big difficulty for Aliyev is that Nakhchivan and Syunik both border Iran and any land bridge would necessarily run parallel to the Armenian-Iranian border. Tehran has made it clear that it is staunchly opposed to any developments near its border that could interfere with its trade routes via Syunik and is clearly also greatly concerned that such a corridor would extend Turkey’s geopolitical heft across both the South Caucasus and Central Asia, which borders Azerbaijan. There were fresh reports this week in the Iranian media of Tehran beefing up its military deployments near Iran’s borders with Armenia and Azerbaijan.
Russia’s current stance on whether the corridor should be permitted by Armenia is not clear, but Moscow is engaged in an increasingly bitter spat with Armenia over Yerevan’s accusation that Russia has not lived up to its security commitments as Armenia’s strategic partner and the Armenian government’s newly expressed willingness to strengthen ties with the West.
Speaking after his meeting with Erdogan in Nakhchivan, where the pair also attended a gas pipeline groundbreaking ceremony, Aliyev—as reported by Turkish state-run news service Anadolu Agency—said: “[Azerbaijan and Turkey] want peace and stability in the region, not war”.
The meeting, however, has clearly sown plenty of anxiety.
Thomas de Waal, a senior fellow at think tank Carnegie Europe who specialises in Eastern Europe and the Caucasus, wrote on his X platform microblog that Azerbaijan and Turkey could present an ultimatum to Armenia over the corridor, saying: “Days after Azerbaijan’s military takeover of Karabakh, Presidents Aliyev and Erdogan meet in Nakhchivan today and will very likely make ultimatums to the Armenian government to ‘open the Zangezur Corridor or else…’
“Can we be really going the world of 1918-21 when big powers try to use force to draw and redraw the map of the Caucasus? Let it not be so.”
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The dissolution of Nagorno-Karabakh as a breakaway state is a seminal point — a rare supernova among the constellation of ethnic conflicts left by the implosion of the USSR.
Refugees sit in the back of a truck near Kornidzor, Armenia, on Thursday. Alain Jocard / AFP – Getty Images
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Sept. 28, 2023, 6:06 PM UTC
By Matt Bradley and Natasha Lebedeva
After more than half the population of an ethnic Armenian enclave fled their homes in a mountainous pocket of land south of Russia, the breakaway republic’s leaders said it would soon “cease to exist.”
In what amounted to a formal capitulation to Azerbaijan, which surrounds it, the Armenian leaders of Nagorno-Karabakh said the self-declared Republic of Artsakh would be dismantled by the end of the year.
This would end three decades of intermittent conflict in and around the enclave, break a 10-month blockade of the region in the South Caucasus that residents said had starved them into submission, and dash hopes of an independent state in territory claimed by Azerbaijan.
The dissolution of Nagorno-Karabakh as a breakaway state is a seminal point — a rare supernova among the constellation of ethnic conflicts left by the implosion of the then-Soviet Union in the early 1990s. The conflict’s abrupt halt reflects how the geopolitical reach of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine has forced realignments far beyond that war.
In an official decree, the region’s separatist President Samvel Shakhramanyan said that residents of Nagorno-Karabakh must now “familiarize themselves with the conditions of reintegration” into Azerbaijan and make “an independent and individual decision about the possibility of staying (or returning) in Nagorno-Karabakh.”
An Armenian family fleeing Nagorno-Karabakh arrives at Yerevan airport in 1991 after being evacuated by a Soviet army helicopter.Wojtek Druszcz / AFP via Getty Images
The announcement came as around 70,000 of the enclave’s population of about 120,000 fled from the region, which sits within Azerbaijan’s borders, to neighboring Armenia, according to Armenia’s government, with more still arriving.
Many residents hauled what few personal belongings they could gather into packed cars, trucks, buses and tractors, some pockmarked with shrapnel after days of Azerbaijani attacks.
Armenia’s leadership has accused Azerbaijan of instigating a refugee crisis by launching a swift invasion this week. Azerbaijan has denied allegations of “ethnic cleansing,” saying it is not forcing people to leave, and would peacefully reintegrate the region and guarantee rights of ethnic Armenians.
Holding a wealth of monasteries, mosques and other religious sites, Nagorno-Karabakh is culturally significant for both Muslim Azeris and what was an overwhelming Christian Armenian population. Armenians in Azerbaijan have been victims of pogroms, while Azerbaijanis claim discrimination and violence at the hands of Armenians.
“Azerbaijan has won a comprehensive military victory and what we’re looking at now is the prospect of Nagorno-Karabakh without Armenians or with very few Armenians remaining,” said Thomas de Waal, a senior fellow with the London-based Carnegie Europe think tank. “So in that sense, Azerbaijan has won.”
The Karabakh Mountains, seen from the Armenian side of the border with Azerbaijan on Wednesday.Alain Jocard / AFP – Getty Images
For those fleeing, the despair of losing their homes was made worse by losing their homeland.
“Many of them are from villages which were taken by the Azerbaijani army, so they really lost their homes already,” said Astrig Agopian, a French Armenian journalist who has been reporting this week on the refugee crisis from Armenia’s border. “There is really this feeling that this time is different. It’s another war, but it’s a war that is definitely lost this time.”
Were that the case, it would bring to an end decades of violence in the region, which has been at the center of geopolitical interests between Eastern and Western nations for centuries.
The political dispute between Armenia and Azerbaijan over Nagorno-Karabakh began as the then-Soviet Union weakened in the late 1980s, and Armenians demanded that the majority-Armenian region be incorporated into the Armenian Soviet Socialist Republic.
Ethnic Armenians from Nagorno-Karabakh comfort a young woman upon arriving in Kornidzor, Armenia, on Tuesday. Vasily Krestyaninov / AP
After the USSR collapsed in 1991, the conflict erupted into a full-scale war that persisted until a Russian-brokered peace deal in 1994. About 30,000 people were killed and more than a million people displaced.
“My husband died in the first war. He was 30, I was 26. Our children were 3 and 4 years old. It is the fourth war that I went through,” Narine Shakaryan, a grandmother of four, told the Reuters news agency after she arrived in Armenia. “My husband died back then, he was 30 in 1994. That’s the cursed life that we live.”
The fighting continued intermittently for several more decades, leaving an indelible mark on generations of Nagorno-Karabakh’s ethnic Armenian residents. A recent war in 2020 saw the more powerful Azerbaijan, backed by Turkey, reclaim much of the land surrounding the area, as well as part of the region itself.
Russia negotiated an end to that flare-up and even deployed peacekeepers to ensure security along the Lachin Corridor, the single mountain road that connected Armenia to Nagorno-Karabakh.
But the events of the past year show how Moscow, which has historically played the role of both peacekeeper and ally to Armenia — which shares its Christian roots and hosts a Russian military base — has adjusted its allegiances following its invasion of Ukraine and its conflicts with the West.
Refugees crossing the border near Kornidzor, Armenia, on Wednesday.Alain Jocard / AFP – Getty Images
“The pivotal factor was that Azerbaijan was talking separately to the Russians, and had a joint agenda with the Russians, to pressure Armenia and also to keep the West out of the Caucasus,” de Waal said. “This is why when the Azerbaijani assault happened, Russian peacekeepers who could have actually stopped it stood down. And then Russia failed to condemn the attack.”
After its invasion of Ukraine left Russia isolated, Moscow may feel it has more to gain from cozying up to Azerbaijan than Armenia, particularly after the latter made a public display of cozying up to the West and provided humanitarian aid to Kyiv.
Earlier this month, the country conducted joint exercises with the U.S. military and the Armenian Parliament is set to vote next week on whether to accede to the International Criminal Court, which classifies Russian President Vladimir Putin as a war criminal — a move the Kremlin characterized Thursday as “extremely hostile.”
Inside Nagorno-Karabakh, Azerbaijan’s government has assured the region’s Armenian population that they will be treated humanely and afforded equal rights.
But after months of blockades and blistering fighting, few ethnic Armenians believe it and many feel they have no choice but to flee.
Last week, Vardan Tadevosyan was still the health minister of a small if unrecognised republic in the south Caucasus mountains, managing dozens of government employees and running one of the busiest medical facilities in the region.
But in a span of 24 hours, the government of Nagorno-Karabakh ceased to exist. Soon, Tadevosyan’s staff began to leave their offices; patients vacated their hospital beds; doctors and nurses disappeared. There were so few police officers left that the streets started to feel unsafe.
Only the roads out of the region’s capital, Stepanakert, were busy — jammed with the tens of thousands of ethnic Armenians fleeing the city after Azerbaijan retook the breakaway enclave by force in a brief but bloody war last week. About 200 people were killed, according to local officials; the injured were soon ferried to Yerevan, the Armenian capital.
“We don’t have any more army, we have no police, no state . . . in two days, only ghosts will be around. The city will be totally empty,” Tadevosyan said, speaking by phone from the medical centre he founded 25 years ago.
He had come to the centre to pack up its equipment. “Almost all of my staff are already on their way,” he said. “Just a couple of people are still here, but all of them want to leave.”
Stepanakert’s empty streets mark a tragedy for Armenia, a country that sees the mountainous region as its ancestral heartland — a point strongly disputed by its oil-rich neighbour Azerbaijan, which also has historical ties to the area.
It also marks an abrupt and brutal end to one of the most bitter land disputes born of the Soviet Union’s collapse, one that had defined the region for decades. The territory, which was internationally recognised as Azerbaijan’s, became known as a textbook “frozen” conflict, one that allowed Russia to continue playing power broker in what it terms its “near abroad”.
But as Armenia reels from the events of the past week, Russia’s hold over the country appears to have been damaged beyond repair. Moscow was long seen as Armenia’s key ally and security guarantor; Armenians expected it to protect the status quo and prevent the absorption of Karabakh into Azerbaijan.
“Our hopes rested on the Russians, they are our brothers. Why did they allow the Azerbaijanis to treat us this way?” said a former village shopkeeper, who had brought her thin, wizened, 85-year-old mother to a hospital after making the journey out of Karabakh. Both women had lost a son to one of the many wars for Karabakh.
In the hospital, located in Goris in southern Armenia, wards are filled with families who fled and are now recovering from their gruelling journey. So far, more than 70,000 people — or more than half of Karabakh’s total population — have left.
One woman spent two nights with her daughter, who has cerebral palsy, in the huge queue of cars that had formed along the single, serpentine road out from Karabakh, laying the 12-year-old on the ground when she had epileptic fits.
Another had brought her husband to the hospital; he had suffered a mini-stroke after crossing a checkpoint set up by Azerbaijan.
Armenia’s prime minister Nikol Pashinyan last week publicly criticised Russia and questioned the work of the 2,000 Russian soldiers that had been deployed since 2020 to keep the peace in Karabakh.
Pashinyan told Armenians that “the security systems and the allies we have relied on for many years” were “ineffective”, and that the “instruments of the Armenian-Russian strategic partnership” were “not enough to ensure Armenia’s external security”.
It marks a historic shift in the country’s foreign policy and, for Moscow, a loss of one of its oldest allies. “We are convinced that the Armenian leadership is making a huge mistake,” the Kremlin said, decrying Pashinyan’s “pivot away from Russia” and “a frenzied anti-Russian campaign” in local media.
As protests broke out in Yerevan over the loss of Karabakh, some Armenians spoke of their fear that Russia could fuel the demonstrations in order to put pressure on Pashinyan, or even overthrow him, a claim the Kremlin swiftly denied.
Distracted by its draining war in Ukraine, Russia however is unlikely to muscle in, as it has been known to do when countries drift from its orbit, said Richard Giragosian, director of the Regional Studies Center, a think-tank in Yerevan.
“Yes, Moscow is angry with Yerevan. But Moscow is more angry and much more challenged by Baku,” Giragosian said. The seizure of Nagorno-Karabakh revealed “Russian weakness in the face of the Azerbaijani use of force”, furthering the “steady erosion of Russia’s standing and the slow death of the ‘myth of Russian military might’”, he said.
With Armenian public anger over the loss of Karabakh directed more at Russia, as well as the breakaway region’s elite, and at the west for its inaction, Pashinyan’s position seems secure, Giragosian said.
Fears remain, however, that Azerbaijan’s ambitions could extend beyond Karabakh, which it first lost to Armenia in a war in the 1990s, and into southern Armenia.
Azerbaijan’s president Ilham Aliyev recently described the region as “western Azerbaijan”, though the two countries are also holding peace talks where they are expected to mutually recognise each other’s territorial integrity. “We have no claim on their territory,” Elin Suleymanov, Azerbaijan’s ambassador to the UK, told the Financial Times.
As the exodus from Karabakh continues, Azerbaijani security services have not yet entered Stepanakert, locals said. But border guards have made the first arrest of a member of the Karabakh elite. Another on Thursday decided to give himself up, travelling to Azerbaijan.
A process of disarmament is ongoing, with Karabakh soldiers handing over weapons to Azerbaijan at Russian peacekeeping bases.
That process is going peacefully, Suleymanov said. He rejected the notion of ethnic cleansing, saying people were leaving of their own accord, and though he acknowledged that they might be driven out by fear, he said they were victims of manufactured hysteria.
He described the region as being restored to “normalcy” after the fighting, with aid being delivered, field kitchens going up and Azerbaijani doctors soon to be sent to work in local hospitals.
Armenians fleeing Karabakh see things differently.
“It was chaos, an anthill. Everyone was rushing around in a panic,” said a 50-year-old teacher, holding her two-month-old granddaughter in the hospital in Goris. The family had struggled to find medical aid for an infection the baby had caught while they were sheltering underground from Azerbaijan’s offensive.
The child was saved by a doctor who had planned to evacuate but chose to stay on for longer when the baby’s condition worsened. On Monday, when nurses began handing out the hospital’s medical supplies for free, the family decided to risk it and leave.
Tadevosyan, who queried whether he should be referred to as the health minister of Nagorno-Karabakh since the republic no longer existed, said he was dismayed by the “very chaotic” evacuation.
“People just started to leave. No one is giving them instruction,” he said. He plans to leave as well, but not for some time yet. “I have to be one of the last to go.”
Late on Monday, as people struggled to buy petrol for the journey out of Stepanakert, which is called Khankendi in Azeri, a massive explosion rocked a fuel depot, killing more than 100 people and covering the sky in thick, black smoke.
It was a devastating final blow, Tadevosyan said. “The explosion just killed everyone morally. We were already very sad. It is dramatic, tragedy feeling, when your country is leaving, and you lose your motherland.”
Armenia will process the historic loss for years to come. “I lost my identity,” Tadevosyan said.
Yeghishe Kirakosyan, Armenia’s representative on international legal affairs, explained what to expect if Russian President Vladimir Putin enters Armenia once the latter ratifies the Rome Statute. In a briefing with reporters at the National Assembly (NA) Thursday, Kirakosyan stated that the serving heads of state are endowed with immunity.
“Secondly, the solutions based on Article 96, Section 2 of the Rome Statute were proposed to our Russian colleagues. It implies the signing of a bilateral agreement which enables to create certain guarantees for the concerns that some partner countries may have. The text was submitted [to Russia] months ago, we are waiting for the proposal of our colleagues,” Kirakosyan added.
But he could not say why the Russian side reacts so sharply to Armenia’s expected ratification of the Rome Statute, and noted that even if there is an issue, there are solutions to that issue.
“It is not a reservation. It is about an agreement to be signed on the basis of [the Rome Statute’s] Section 2 of Article 96, which can provide for certain regulations, obligations on a bilateral level, which can solve this concern,” he said, adding that the proposal was sent to the Russian side in April, but until now there is still no answer, and they are waiting.
The NA Standing Committee on State and Legal Affairs has already adopted the draft for the ratification of the Rome Statute, and it has been put on the agenda of the regular plenary session of the NA.
The International Criminal Court has issued an international arrest warrant for Russian President Vladimir Putin, which implies that the countries that have ratified the Rome Statute must arrest Putin if he visits those countries. The Russian foreign ministry sent a note of protest regarding the Armenian government sending the Rome Statute to the National Assembly for ratification.
Refugees from Nagorno-Karabakh region ride in a truck upon their arrival at the border village of Kornidzor, Armenia, September 27, 2023. REUTERS/Irakli Gedenidze Acquire Licensing Rights
LONDON, Sept 28 (Reuters) – Azerbaijan does not want a mass exodus of ethnic Armenians from Nagorno-Karabakh and is not encouraging anyone to leave the “liberated” region, Elin Suleymanov, Azerbaijan’s ambassador to Britain, said on Thursday.
In an interview with Reuters, Suleymanov said Azerbaijan, which took back control of Karabakh last week in a military operation, had not yet had a chance to prove what he said was its genuine commitment to provide secure and better living conditions for those ethnic Armenians who choose to stay.
Some 70,500 people had crossed from Karabakh into Armenia by early Thursday afternoon, Russia’s RIA news agency reported, out of an estimated population of 120,000. Earlier, Ethnic Armenian authorities in Karabakh said they were dissolving the breakaway statelet they had defended against Azerbaijan for three decades.
Many of those leaving have said they fear persecution and ethnic cleansing at the hands of Azerbaijan. Some critics have said the exodus, which has shown how little trust many Armenians have in Azerbaijani promises, is what Baku wants as it will make it easier to resettle the area with Azerbaijanis.
Suleymanov, who issued a call on social media appealing to ethnic Armenians to stay and be part of a multi-ethnic Azerbaijan, said he understood why many civilians were frightened, but that those who chose to stay would benefit from planned rebuilding and infrastructure projects.
“What should Azerbaijan do? We cannot keep them by force, we don’t want to keep anyone by force, (but) we don’t encourage anyone to leave,” he said, adding that Azerbaijani authorities had delivered requested medical, fuel and other supplies.
“We would prefer for people at least to be in a position to make a more informed decision on whether they want to stay. So far, Azerbaijan has not had any chance to prove anything because the time was very short.”
HISTORIC MONUMENTS
Karabakh Armenians will enjoy the same rights and protections as other citizens of Azerbaijan, he said. Karabakh is internationally recognised as part of Azerbaijan.
He rejected Armenian fears that Azerbaijan would now proceed to destroy Armenian churches and monasteries in Karabakh, saying Baku had “no reason” to destroy historic monuments.
Baku’s use of force to retake Karabakh has fuelled fears among some Armenians that it may also use force to carve out a land corridor via Armenia to link up western Azerbaijan with its autonomous exclave of Nakhchivan, a strip of territory nestled between Armenia, Iran and Turkey.
Suleymanov said the idea was to re-open transport corridors and make the wider region more prosperous and that he hoped a road and rail corridor could be agreed on via negotiation.
“Nobody is going to open anything by force,” he said. “That defeats the purpose. Nobody is going to put troops there, we’re not going to invade them (Armenia).”
Reporting by Andrew Osborn
Editing by Gareth Jones
As Russia Chief Political Correspondent, and former Moscow bureau chief, Andrew helps lead coverage of the world’s largest country, whose political, economic and social transformation under President Vladimir Putin he has reported on for much of the last two decades, along with its growing confrontation with the West and wars in Georgia and Ukraine. Andrew was part of a Wall Street Journal reporting team short-listed for a Pulitzer Prize for international reporting. He has also reported from Moscow for two British newspapers, The Telegraph and The Independent.
