Baku on Sunday accused Moscow of failing to meet its obligations under the Russia-sponsored 2020 ceasefire agreement to end Azerbaijan’s war with Armenia for control of the country. Nagorno-Karabakh region, the day after talks between Yerevan and Baku. “The Russian side has not ensured the full implementation of the agreement within the framework of its obligations,” Azerbaijan’s foreign ministry said, adding that Moscow “did nothing to prevent” the Armenia to deliver military equipment to separatist forces in the enclave.
Nagorno-Karabakh has been the scene of a conflict between Baku and Yerevan for decades: two wars have broken out between the neighbors with at the center of the dispute this mountainous territory, populated mainly by Armenians but internationally recognized as part of the Azerbaijan. Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev and Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan met in Brussels on Saturday for new negotiations on a lasting solution to decades of conflict, under the auspices of European Council President Charles Michel, with Russia offering a organize a summit in Moscow with a view to regaining control of the peace process.
In the fall of 2020, Moscow sponsored a ceasefire agreement at the end of a six-week war that saw the defeat of Armenian forces, forced to cede territories they controlled. Russia had undertaken to deploy soldiers to guarantee free movement between Armenia and Nagorno-Karabakh via the Lachin corridor, the only road linking Armenia to the enclave of Nagorno-Karabakh.
This was closed on Tuesday by Azerbaijan on the grounds of acts of “smuggling” carried out by the Armenian branch of the Red Cross, which was nevertheless able to resume medical evacuations from Nagorno-Karabakh on Friday. On Saturday, the Russian Foreign Ministry urged Azerbaijan to reopen the corridor. On site, 6,000 people gathered on Friday to make the same request.
Russian diplomacy also said that Armenia’s recent recognition of Karabakh as part of Azerbaijan “radically changed the position of the Russian peacekeeping contingent” deployed in Nagorno-Karabakh. As part of negotiations in late May, Yerevan agreed to recognize Nagorno-Karabakh as part of Azerbaijan, subject to compliance with several mechanisms such as protecting the rights and security of Armenian residents of the region.
Saturday in Brussels, discussions between MM. Aliyev and Pashinyan focused in particular on the “worsening of the humanitarian crisis in Nagorno-Karabakh”, according to the Armenian Foreign Ministry, which added that the two sides had “agreed to intensify work aimed at resolving the existing problems”. “Our exchanges were once again frank, honest and substantial,” said Mr. Michel, in a short statement after the meeting.
He encouraged the two leaders “to take courageous steps to ensure decisive and irreversible progress on the road to normalization”. Mr. Michel announced his intention to organize a new meeting with the two leaders in Brussels after the summer, as well as a five-way discussion at the beginning of October in Spain, with the French and German leaders on the sidelines of the next Community summit European politics. The involvement in the region of Western countries, especially the EU, is growing while the traditional policeman of the Caucasus, Russia, bogged down in its invasion of Ukraine, seems to be losing its means of action.
On Saturday, in an effort to regain control of this process, the Kremlin offered to host a meeting at the level of foreign ministers, while suggesting that the future peace treaty could be signed in Moscow. Russia is ready “to hold a trilateral meeting of foreign ministers in Moscow in the near future,” the Russian Foreign Ministry said in a statement. Moscow also offers to host “a Russia-Azerbaijan-Armenia summit in due course to sign the relevant (peace) treaty”. But for now, tensions have escalated a notch.
