By Sept. 25, the flow of former residents of the Armenian-occupied Nagorno-Karabakh had begun to turn into a steady stream, making its way across the Lachin Corridor to nearby Armenia and out of Azerbaijan. The enclave of Nagorno-Karabakh essentially ceased to exist.
The flow was managed by Russian peacekeeping forces, but the fate of the enclave, always legally part of Azerbaijan, was decided in a few days—really a few hours—of fighting. The reality was that the fate of the enclave had been within the grasp of the Azerbaijan government since the decisive fighting in October–November 2022.
Politicians in Yerevan, the Armenian capital, seemed to have learned nothing from the profound military defeat they suffered when they initiated a deliberate military campaign to expand their control of Azerbaijani territory in October–November 2020.
It was a move that failed comprehensively and predictably. Yerevan had disregarded the massive and growing economic and military disparity between Armenia and Azerbaijan in the years since 1990, when Armenia had successfully seized large amounts of Azerbaijani territory, including Nagorno-Karabakh, as the Soviet Union—to which both countries had been subject—collapsed.
Azerbaijan, after the successful exploitation of its oil and gas fields since about 2002 (but also with its emphasis on privatizing the old Soviet economy since about 1994), had grown substantially in economic, military, and geopolitical power, while Armenia remained economically unsuccessful, militarily locked into a 1990 time warp.
Armenia had diminishing leverage, even with post-Soviet Russia, which had guaranteed much of Armenia’s security. Armenia’s other alliance, with Iran, contributed little or nothing to Yerevan except some energy security.
A new round of warfare in and near the remaining Armenian-occupied parts of Azerbaijan began on Aug. 3, in which, initially, one Azerbaijani and two Armenian soldiers were killed, with each side blaming the other for the recommencement of hostilities. Russian peacekeeping forces, in place since the 2020 ceasefire, attempted to stabilize the situation, but eventually, the death toll rose to some 200. The Azerbaijani government said it had begun when an 18-year-old soldier had been killed near the old Lachin Corridor: the former land bridge between Nagorno-Karabakh and Armenia, essentially severed in the 2020 fighting.
The tripartite ceasefire accord, brokered by Russia, had promised a new road link between Nagorno-Karabakh and Armenia by 2024.
Clearly, however, Russian interests in defending the Armenian enclave—self-styled as the Republic of Artsakh—have changed since that accord was brokered in 2020.
It is not that Armenia is now of less concern to Moscow, but rather, Azerbaijan has grown dramatically in importance to Moscow.
Azerbaijan is now an essential component of the new Russian-controlled International North-South Transport Corridor (INSTC), which provides a logistical link by riverine ships, road, and rail from St. Petersburg on the Baltic, through Moscow and down to Astrakhan on the northern Caspian Sea, and there via road and sea to northern Iran to connect with rail links to Bandar Abbas on the nexus of the Persian Gulf and Arabian Sea (Indian Ocean), and thence to India.
The INSTC is of profound strategic importance to Russia and India, not merely for the confirmed trade capacity but because it is a key element in Moscow’s ongoing attempts (for many decades) to have a strategic encirclement or containment of China, an area of common ground with India.
This, then, is also key to Russia’s concern to build a strong relationship with the Iranian clerical government. The net result is that Armenia and Turkey are essentially excluded from Russia’s thinking; they are unnecessary, and perhaps unreliable, to have as part of the INSTC.
As a result, when fighting resumed between Nagorno-Karabakh (Artsakh) forces and Azerbaijani forces on Aug. 3, it was clear that the Azerbaijani government in Baku made a decision to resolve some of the unsatisfied elements of the 2020 fighting. Certainly, that conflict had totally reopened Azerbaijan’s options, returning to it a land corridor to its former exclave of Nakhchivan, which has, on its west, a short land border with Turkey. And while Baku now has a reason for its recent rapprochement with Moscow, it is still linked with Turkey, which gives it a land link to Europe and the Mediterranean.
This also makes Azerbaijan a critical link for the five Central Asian states to be able to trade with Europe without transiting Russia or China.
The resumption of fighting was entirely at the cost of Nargorno-Karabakh, and, as a result, President Arayik Harutyunyan resigned on Sept. 1, along with the second most senior official, State Minister Gurgen Nersisyan.
Mr. Harutyunyan said that holding on to the post could impede negotiations with the Azerbaijani government. Before resigning, he said that Mr. Nersisyan would be replaced by Samvel Shahramanyan, the former head of the region’s Security Council. Ten days before his resignation, Mr. Harutyunyan agreed to changes allowing parliament to appoint his successor.
The fighting, however, continued, and Azerbaijan rejected Armenian calls for a ceasefire and talks, saying that its “anti-terrorist operation” would continue until “illegal Armenian military formations” surrendered and the separatist government of Nagorno-Karabakh dismantled itself. During Soviet times, Nagorno-Karabakh was recognized as an autonomous oblast within the Azerbaijan Soviet Socialist Republic and was regarded as an autonomous region of post-Soviet Azerbaijan. But even before the collapse of the USSR, Armenia was attempting to claim Nagorno-Karabakh as part of Armenia.
But by August–September 2023, that was moot. The renewed fighting saw Azerbaijan reasserting control over its old territory. Azerbaijani forces appeared to have destroyed the last vestiges of Armenian control of Nagorno-Karabakh. The Associated Press reported on Sept. 19: “Ethnic Armenian officials in Nagorno-Karabakh said in a statement that the region’s capital of Stepanakert and other villages were ‘under intense shelling.’ The [Nagorno-Karabak’s] military said Azerbaijan was using aircraft, artillery, and missile systems and drones in the fighting.”
The resultant strategic framework has become more complex. However, Azerbaijan’s strategic importance has been raised by its centrality to the needs of Moscow, Tehran, Ankara, Washington (and the West), and the Central Asian states. At the same time, Moscow has diminished reliance on Ankara but increased dependence on the Iranian mullahs, whose position internally in Iran remains difficult due to ongoing internal unrest. There is no doubt that the developments have strengthened the mullahs and also boosted the traditionally cool ties of Iran with Azerbaijan (once part of Persia/Iran). And Armenia is now left with little international leverage.
On Sept. 20, the Russian defense ministry said it had brokered a ceasefire and that Nagorno-Karabakh had promised to disperse army units and hand over military hardware ahead of “reintegration talks” with Azerbaijan. But the 110,000 or so population of the enclave was moving to Armenia almost en masse.
It had self-conditioned to a paranoid belief that the Azerbaijanis would, if they stayed, wipe them out in a fit of genocidal rage, despite decades of commitment by the Azerbaijan government to protect the enclave’s right to its ethnic autonomy, and despite the reality that Azerbaijan has a demonstrated history of tolerance and acceptance of religious minorities, from Jews and Orthodox Christians to other sects.
The outcome was, in fact, determined by the Armenian moves against Azerbaijan even before the collapse of the USSR, and then, in earnest in and after 1990—as the USSR collapsed—when Armenia militarily seized a substantial portion of Azerbaijan when that country had been weak and essentially militarily defenseless.
