Russia and the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict: unbalanced

The foreign ministers of Armenia and Azerbaijan did not even sit at a table in Moscow: Sohrab Mnazakanjan and Ceyhun Bayramov spoke separately with their Russian colleague Sergei Lavrov. They returned to Moscow on Wednesday. Once again, it was about how the ceasefire agreed to in besieged Nagorno-Karabakh can be maintained.

Lavrov had negotiated it in eleven hours on October 9, when Mnazakanjan and Bayramov were at the same table with him at least at some point.

However, the weapons were only idle afterwards, so both countries hold each other accountable. A second attempt a few days later also failed. Fighting in the South Caucasus has been going on for three and a half weeks, and fierce fighting rages every meter in the mountainous region, which under international law belongs to Azerbaijan but is in fact controlled by Armenia.

It is the worst confrontation between Armenia and Azerbaijan since the end of the war in 1994. The government of the Armenian capital, Yerevan, has already reported more than 870 soldiers killed. In Baku, Azerbaijan, the government does not provide any information on the casualties in the army, but speaks of dozens of civilian casualties and hundreds of wounded. Both countries accuse each other of having reignited the war.

“Moscow has seriously lost its authority”

For a long time, Russia was able to freeze the dangerous conflict over Nagorno-Karabakh. In 1994, shortly after the collapse of the Soviet Union, Moscow had reached an armistice. Even when new fighting broke out in April 2016, Russia reacted quickly: mediated by President Vladimir Putin, the two warring neighboring states agreed to a ceasefire after four days.

But now, four years later, it is not so easy anymore. Moscow still sees itself as the central mediator, but it is increasingly clear that this time Russia will not be able to secure a new permanent ceasefire on its own. Moscow has lost its influence, and that is mainly due to Turkey.

In this war, she is clearly siding with Azerbaijan and, according to SPIEGEL’s research, even supports Baku’s fight with mercenaries from Syria and Libya.

“With the interference of Turkey, Moscow has seriously lost its authority,” says Russian military expert Alexander Golts. The use of mercenaries would also amount to an insult to Russia: in Syria, the Russian leadership always emphasizes how successful the fight against fighters known as’ terrorists’ is, says Golts, ‘and now these fighters of all people are directly on the Russian border used “.

With Turkey’s intervention, Moscow can no longer maintain the relationship between the warring states of Armenia and Azerbaijan, which has been painstakingly balanced for decades. Russia has long played an ambivalent role in this regard: on the one hand, together with the United States and France, it chairs the OSCE Minsk Group, which has been fighting for peace in Nagorno-Karabakh since the 1990s. Indeed, Washington and Paris largely withdrew from this role, leaving mediation to Moscow. On the other hand, Russia used its relations with neighboring warring states to unite them to itself and to arm them:

• With Armenia it’s russia closely related. They both belong to the “Collective Security Treaty Organization”, a defense union. Moscow operates a military base in Armenia, supplies arms and gas on favorable terms, and supports the country with loans.

• Azerbaijan maintains a good neighborhood On Russia, President Ilham Aliyev also maintains good personal relations with the head of the Kremlin, Vladimir Putin. Russia provided the Azerbaijani army with modern weapons. Unlike Yerevan, Baku can pay more: Moscow delivered tanks, helicopters and air defense systems at market prices.

In Azerbaijan, however, there was growing frustration that Armenia created facts in the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict in recent years. He built settlements around the region in the areas he occupied. Yerevan sees these territories as an important protection zone. However, the Minsk group did in fact recommend that they cede to Baku. But there one felt more and more alone with this demand, especially from Russia.

What options does Moscow have?

Moscow, in turn, now faces Turkey not only in Syria and Libya, but also in the Caucasus. Except this time it is a conflict in what, from Putin’s point of view, is an exclusively Russian sphere of influence. That complicates things, apart from all the other crises that the Kremlin has yet to face this year: in addition to the corona pandemic, there are above all the ongoing protests in Belarus and the deep crisis in relations with the EU after the crisis. Poison attack on Alexei Navalny.

“Russia would rather regain the status quo, but it is too late for that,” says Moscow political analyst Arkadij Dubnow. Azerbaijan has already regained territories. Baku repeatedly reports on the capture of settlements, information that often cannot be independently verified.

“What is preventing President Aliyev from engaging in real negotiations on a ceasefire is Turkey,” the expert believes. Because Ankara has Azerbaijan in the background. Moscow must now provide Aliyev with arguments that “war is not the right way in this conflict.”

Moscow’s options are not the best:

• Works on the Armenian sidewhatever Yerevan is demanding, Azerbaijan will depend even more than before on the support of Turkey. The result would be an indirect war in the South Caucasus, in which Moscow cannot have any interest. Armenia would probably be oriented more to the west. It had already reported attacks on its territory, actually one of the reasons Russia would have to intervene after the mutual defense union reservation agreement, but Moscow did not respond.

• Russia continues to take advantage of its neutral role as mediator On the way back, and Azerbaijan manages to retake the occupied territories of Armenia by force, it will not be Moscow, whom Baku thanks for this, but Ankara, which openly supports their struggle. And Armenia would continue to drift away as well.