The end for Artsakh

There is one fewer country in the world today, with the extinction of the independence of the Republic of Artsakh – also called Nagorno-Karabakh. The BBC headline describes the outcome as a “ceasefire”, but to all intents and purposes the Armenians of Artsakh seem to have surrendered unconditionally. Azerbaijan, which launched the offensive on Tuesday, has won a complete victory.

The writing has been on the wall for some time. Back in May, Armenian prime minister Nikol Pashinyan indicated an in-principle willingness to give up on Artsakh independence, hoping in return for some guarantee for the well-being of its ethnic Armenians. But while Azerbaijani president Ilham Aliyev reportedly said that “Azerbaijanis had nothing against the population” of Artsakh, in practical terms there is now nothing to protect them from the vengeance of their neighbors.

I expressed doubt in May whether they would “be offered anything other than wholesale deportation,” and that now looks the most likely outcome. Thomas de Waal, a specialist on the region, says (as quoted by the BBC) “We’re probably, unfortunately, seeing a project whereby the Azerbaijanis offer so little to the Karabakh Armenians that most if not all of them will leave.” Armenians are no strangers to genocide: evacuation, however chaotic, will seem preferable to the fate that might otherwise be in store for them.

Mass flight or deportation (the two are often hard to distinguish) is nothing new. Since the Yugoslav wars of the 1990s we’ve called it “ethnic cleansing”; a prior euphemism was “population transfer”. Sometimes there seems to be a rough sort of historical justice involved – as with the Sudeten Germans in 1945, or the pieds noirs of Algeria in 1962 – but even then it is the politically unengaged masses who mostly pay the price rather than their more culpable leaders. In Artsakh’s case, all the Armenians sought was self-determination for a land that had been their home for centuries.

The proximate causes of Armenia’s defeat are twofold: firstly, the cooling of relations with Russia following the democratic revolution of 2018 that brought Pashinyan to power, and secondly the Russian invasion of Ukraine, which diverted Russian attention and drastically depleted its military capacity. Armenia has been left with the worst of both worlds: close enough to Russia to share in its misfortunes, but not close enough to be able to rely on its assistance.

With Russia either unable or unwilling to intervene, it was only a matter of time before the Azeris took advantage of their military superiority. As I said at the time of the 2020 ceasefire agreement, “Armenia will be hoping that the [Russian] peacekeepers do their job. Without them, Azerbaijan would be able to cut the Lachin corridor, and with Azeri troops and artillery positioned in Shusha, the Artsakh capital Stepanakert would be a sitting duck.”

Sure enough, that’s what happened. Azerbaijan has applied increasing pressure over the last twelve months, culminating in a rapid assault this week to which Armenia had no answer. The most Russia did was lend its services towards facilitating the surrender, saying that it “did not see Azerbaijan’s actions as a violation of international law.”

Nonetheless, and despite the human tragedy, this is a significant geopolitical defeat for Russia. Although in the short term it will create major problems for Pashinyan’s government, the end result is bound to be a further distancing between Yerevan and Moscow. That in turn will have implications for neighboring Georgia, whose government’s unsteady moves towards a rapprochement with Russia have met strong public resistance.

More generally, friendship with Russia has been shown to yield a poor return. While the consequences for the people of Artsakh are dire, if that lesson is learnt more widely then it may one day bring a more peaceful world.