At a recent press conference, an exasperated President Putin replied to criticism of Russia from Armenia:

“Before the 2020 Karabakh War and since 1994, Armenia occupied Nagorno-Karabakh & 7 other regions of Azerbaijan. All these years, we requested that Armenia return 5 regions back to Azerbaijan but keep Nagorno-Karabakh, plus 2 other regions (Lachin & Kelbajar). And all these years Armenia refused such a deal. When we would ask them what are you going to do then? They would answer: we will fight for all of it. Then, the 2020 War happened and now they have ended up with nothing, and the government of Armenia have even recognised all of Nagorno-Karabakh as Azerbaijan. There’s nothing Russia can do anymore for Armenia at this point. There’s no reason to blame Russia for abandoning Armenia.”

In 1994 Armenia won an extravagant victory over Azerbaijan in the war over Karabakh which broke out during the collapse of the Soviet Union. During this war the Armenian inhabitants of the Nagorno-Karabakh Autonomous Oblast of the Azerbaijan Soviet Socialist Republic declared Miatsum (union) with Armenia and succeeded, with the help of the new nationalist Armenian State and volunteers from the diaspora, in capturing not only the Oblast but also 7 surrounding provinces of Azerbaijan. In the course of doing this the Armenians expelled 750,000 Muslims from the territories they began to occupy.

In 1994 a ceasefire was agreed in Karabakh and the frontlines frozen, with the Armenians occupying around 18 per cent of Azerbaijan’s internationally recognised territory. Over the course of the next three decades, a number of peace initiatives were launched by the OSCE Minsk Group, chaired by the US, Russia and France, which had been set up to find a solution to the conflict. These initiatives encompassed a range of approaches, including the full package solution, the phased plan, common state proposals, Key West negotiations, the Madrid Principles, and the 2015 plan presented by Russian Foreign Minister, Sergey Lavrov. All failed.

The Lavrov plan called for the return of 5 of the occupied regions adjacent to the old Nagorno Karabakh Oblast to Azerbaijan, with the 2 remaining regions being returned subsequently. Additionally, it envisaged the creation of a corridor linking Armenia to the area of Azerbaijan occupied by Armenia, and as a result of the ethnic cleansing, inhabited exclusively by Armenians. The plan left the future status of the core of the old Oblast ambiguous and to be decided at a future date. Its purpose was to settle the other issues before there was a war and to attempt to settle the final, most tricky dispute, through negotiations. Various Russians and the Belorussian leader, Lukashenko, warned the Armenians in private that they were living on borrowed time because Azerbaijan was getting its act together under the Aliyevs, while Armenia was weakening.

However, Yerevan refused to accept the Lavrov plan and drew out negotiations with Baku indefinitely, hoping for time to make its occupation of around 18 per cent of Azerbaijan permanent, as the internally displaced Azerbaijanis died out.

However, in a remarkable turn of events, several elements of Lavrov’s proposals came to fruition following the conclusion of the 44 Day War of 2020, in which Azerbaijan, losing patience with obstructed international diplomacy, decided to settle the issue through military force. Baku, using the Lavrov plan as a guide to what Russia was prepared to accept as a solution to the issue, advanced its forces enough to defeat the Armenian occupation without provoking a Russian intervention. In the Trilateral Agreement the War was then managed to a successful conclusion by Putin, in conjunction with Aliyev and Erdogan, with a minimum of bloodshed and a return of all 7 of Azerbaijan’s provinces surrounding the former Oblast. The rump of the old Oblast, in which the bulk of Armenians lived, was then given over to the military authority of a Russian peacekeeping force for a period of 5 years.

The Azerbaijani military effort exceeded the Lavrov Plan and the Armenians lived to rue their rejection of it.

The sequence of events effectively ensured that Russia grabbed ownership of the Karabakh peace process from the OSCE Minsk Group, which had failed to unlock the dispute diplomatically over 3 decades. The Armenians suspected a Moscow/Baku collaboration in this with the Azerbaijani military providing the key to unlock the problem that Russia availed of through Putin’s skilful diplomacy.

But then came the Ukraine War of 2022 and the West was provided with a new opportunity to wrest control of events in the South Caucasus from Russia and revive its lost influence in the region. Pro-Western elements in the South Caucasus believed that the Russians could be reduced from a Great Power by the sanctions and massive assistance provided to Kiev to make a quagmire of Ukraine for Russia. Since then 2 rival peace processes have run in parallel in the South Caucasus.

The Russian Foreign Minister has reportedly presented a new set of proposals recently about the future situation of the Nagorno-Karabakh Armenians. Dikran Bedrosyan, who is close to the so-called “Artsakh President”, shared what he claimed to be a draft of Lavrov’s proposal on his Facebook page. The document bears the title: “The main principles and standards of ensuring the security and rights of the Armenian population in the territory of the former Nagorno Karabakh Autonomous Region of the Azerbaijani SSR, in accordance with the legislation of Azerbaijan”.

Bedrosyan states that during a July meeting in Moscow, Lavrov presented this new document to the Foreign Ministers of Armenia and Azerbaijan. While there has been no official acknowledgement of this by any of the involved parties, the fact that the document’s content was disclosed by a source closely linked to the “President of Artsakh” suggests it is genuine. These things are always kept confidential during peace processes to prevent derailment through public airing or damaging leaks.

The document presented by Lavrov reportedly outlines a series of proposals concerning the Armenian population residing in Nagorno-Karabakh. According to the revelation, the Russian document recommended that the Armenians in Nagorno-Karabakh be granted legal safeguards and protections, with discrimination based on language, nationality, or religion to be expressly prohibited by the Azerbaijani State. Among the stipulations of the proposal is that the Armenian population should not face any form of involuntary or coerced displacement, and the security and well-being of those residing in the region be protected in Azerbaijani law. The document calls for guaranteeing several rights of Armenians, in particular, religious freedom, preservation of cultural and national identity, education in Armenian, and their right to keep all existing private property held.

The Armenians are extremely disappointed by Lavrov’s proposals. They aim to make the Armenians functional and peaceful citizens of Azerbaijan, after all. As Massispost, an Armenian media outlet states:

“Lavrov’s proposed plan does not fully meet the aspirations and yearnings of the people of Artsakh for genuine autonomy and liberty. Given the present circumstances, where Azerbaijan’s actions have taken on a genocidal nature, the resolution to the Nagorno-Karabakh Problem seems to necessitate a distinctive approach: the unequivocal recognition of the internationally established right to self-determination. This can be accomplished only through the principle of Secession for Salvation.”

However, since the Armenian Prime Minister, Pashinyan has recognised the sovereignty of Azerbaijan, the conflict has been reduced to one between Yerevan, wanting to “internationalise” the issue of Karabakh i.e. bring in the West as guarantor of Armenian rights, and Baku, which is totally opposed to such external intervention. Russia will doubtlessly conclude from this that Pashinyan’s objective is to shed the Karabakh Armenians to facilitate a new Westward trajectory toward the EU and possibly NATO.

Armenia’s “Pivot to the West” policy is being supported most vociferously by the diaspora, particularly in the United States and France. Eric Hacopian on CivilNet said that peace negotiations were now “a dead process.” He suggests that Armenians will not sign any peace document that does not codify a process for a system of international guaranteed rights and securities for the Armenians in Karabakh. Russian guarantees, given Moscow’s let-down of Armenia, are inadequate. The West needs to be brought to Karabakh in one form or another for Armenian salvation.

Hacopian says that what the Armenian diaspora fear most is a mass exodus of Armenians from Karabakh, under pressure from Azerbaijan. But while the West is willing to guarantee the sovereignty and territorial integrity of Armenia, Hacopian believes that its only red line in Karabakh would be a “Balkan situation” in which seeing pictures of starving people it launches a “humanitarian intervention” like it did in Bosnia against the Serbs. Hacopian suggests that while the US fully supports Armenia it is not willing to back the Armenians of Karabakh, at present, due to international law. Only an extraordinary situation would bring US forces to Karabakh.

Hacopian thinks that the West could be forced to engage in Karabakh to “internationalise the situation,” like in Bosnia during the 1990s. He suggests that at present the US is putting pressure on the Karabakh Armenians to accept the Azerbaijani-built Aghdam road as a means of supply. However, such an acceptance would be the end of “Artsakh” and the “Gazafication of the Karabakh Armenians” if it were fully implemented. Only the Lachin road with its direct access to Armenia and without Azerbaijani checkpoints is acceptable to the Armenian diaspora. 

Hacopian sees collusion between Moscow and Baku in the current situation in which Baku, with Moscow’s approval and collaboration, turns the screw gradually on Armenia. “The second Armenian Genocide will have a Russian father” he suggests.

A more famous Armenian, Kim Kardashian, has demanded that “the Lachin corridor is opened to stop another genocide.” But one would think that if a genocide was at stake, humanitarian supplies from any route would suffice. The Askeran road, via Aghdam to Khankandi/Stepanakert, is now open for any legitimate needs such as food, medicine, and healthcare supplies, in line with humanitarian concerns. It is unusual for a genocidal force bent on the starvation of a people to offer them food and supplies, whilst the people themselves are so choosy to refuse the food because of the source! But currently trucks from the Azerbaijan Red Crescent with supplies for the Armenians of Karabakh are being held up by supporters of the “Artsakh” regime on the Aghdam Road. 

The Aghdam-Khankandi road is open and a truck carrying supplies from the Russian Red Cross has recently been admitted by the Azerbijani authorities. In this Russia has trumped the EU by using the road supplied by Azerbaijan for normal traffic into Karabakh. This was while EU monitors, participants in an Armenian propaganda show, gazed from their mountain at the white “blockade buster” trucks from Yerevan as they are held up on the Lachin road.

The Armenian media has reported that Azerbaijani troops have moved up en masse to the line of contact and General Kerim Valiyev has arrived in Turkiye for military conversations. Perhaps they were hoping for something. But there was no Bosnia/Balkans. Minds were just concentrated.

US Secretary of State Blinken calls for “the immediate and simultaneous opening of both the Lachin and Agdam routes… To allow passage of desperately needed humanitarian supplies.”

However, the two routes are fundamentally different and they represent the battle over sovereignty which Armenia refuses to concede to Azerbaijan, and international law, at present. With the start of increased border surveillance by the Azerbaijan authorities Armenia began to use the international arena to proclaim that access to “Artsakh” had been maliciously blocked and the Armenian community living there was on the edge of a humanitarian crisis, and genocide, for 9 months!

President Ilham Aliyev, in an interview with EuroNews media agency on August 1, responded to the reporter’s question about allegations of blockade on the Lachin corridor by stating that Azerbaijan had not prevented any passage of people or vehicles except for illegal crossings. Aliyev noted that Red Cross aid vehicles, which were claimed to be blocked, were being used for smuggling purposes, and that contraband items such as tobacco, cellphones, and fuel were found in the intercepted vehicles. The Red Cross confirmed the validity of this by terminating the employment of personnel who they found were engaged in smuggling.

After the Armenian Government stated that Russia could no longer be relied upon to guarantee the security of Armenians, and was engaging in joint exercises with the US military (despite being a member of CSTO) the Kremlin’s spokesman, Dimitri Peskov warned Yerevan:

“Russia is an absolutely integral part of this region… Russia plays a consistent, very important role in stabilising the situation in this region … and we will continue to play this role.”

Modern Armenia is very much a product of Imperial and Soviet Russia. It was Imperial Russia which organised a great movement of Armenian Christians into the provinces of Erivan, Zangezur and Karabakh after wars were won against the Persians and Ottomans. A buffer of Armenian Christian frontiersmen was formed through a forced migration of tens of thousands of the dispersed Armenians from their homelands in Northern Iran and Eastern Anatolia, organised by the Tsar’s Generals. This Tsarist colonisation policy, using Armenians in the absence of Cossacks or Russians, fundamentally altered the population balance in the region, creating, for the first time, Christian majorities in some areas, after generations of favourable Russian administration.

This Tsarist policy made an Armenian state possible in the South Caucasus when the Imperial Russian state collapsed in 1917. The territory for it was provided by the Azerbaijani Musavat in an unwise act of kindness, aimed at providing a homeland for Armenians that would curb future territorial ambitions. But the Armenians, nonetheless, encouraged by the Western Powers who wanted an Armenian buffer, determined to prevent an Ottoman spread into the Caucasus, pursued their extravagant territorial ambitions for Magna Armenia in the 1918-21 period. This brought the Erivan Republic to grief and its inhabitants to a state of mass starvation. The Dashnaks had to be rescued from their self-destruction by the Bolshevising of Armenia in 1921. The Soviets deposed the Dashnaks and organised the remaining Armenian populace into a functional and orderly state, the Armenian Soviet Socialist Republic, which actually lived in peace with its neighbours for nearly 70 years.

When the Soviet system began to collapse under Secretary Gorbachev, the Armenians could have escaped from the Russian embrace, through a benevolent Turkiye, eager to make its peace with the Armenians and facilitate their integration into the European economy. However, the Armenians reverted to type, and anti-Turk hatred, and instead went on a rampage of territorial conquest in Karabakh. When this conquest almost came to disaster, early in the war with Azerbaijan, the Armenians availed of Yeltsin’s offer of assistance with helicopter gunships, to save the Armenian State, which had appeared to have overreached itself. The price Armenia paid for this help was a big Russian base at Gyumri and becoming a virtual dependency of Russia, economically, politically and militarily.

Armenia made its bed with Russia but now wants to run off with an attractive Westerner, who has let him down on a number of occasions. But: “Heaven has no rage like love to hatred turned, Nor hell a fury like a woman scorned.”