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The Kremlin does not want to become the enemy of any of the parties involved, especially Turkey.
Workers at a bread factory in Stepanakert, which supplies the Armenian troops at the front, take a break and watch a video about the latest events in Nagorni Karabach.
All has remained quiet at the Food City food wholesale market in Moscow. Armenian fruit and vegetable traders were able to deliver their produce without hindrance in the days after the fight for Nagorni Karabakh. Food City, like several other food markets and shopping centers in the Russian capital, is owned by two businessmen from Azerbaijan. Today there is also tranquility among the ethnic Armenian and Azeri residents of Moscow.
The Kremlin should be relieved. In the summer, when fighting broke out on the Armenian-Azerbaijani border, the conflict briefly spread to the Muscovite diaspora from the two southern Caucasian states. This highlighted the fact that Russia’s balancing act in the long-standing dispute between Armenia and Azerbaijan is also of domestic political importance. Now, in view of the much more violent war, there is also much more at stake for Moscow.
Call for negotiations
Russia seems strangely absent. President Vladimir Putin has telephoned several times with Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan, whose country is a member of the Moscow-led organization of the Collective Security Treaty, a military alliance with an attack assistance clause. Together with French President Emmanuel Macron and US President Donald Trump, the Kremlin called on the conflicting parties to return to the negotiating table. The Foreign Ministry and the SWR foreign intelligence service expressed great concern about the involvement of Syrian mercenaries in the fighting.
Nikol Paschinjan.
However, mediation efforts, such as the 2016 battles over Nagorni Karabakh that could be limited to four days, are slow to get under way. Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev asked for Putin’s birthday; So far there has been no conversation with the Turkish President, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, who has become a major player in the war. However, it is a step forward that talks between the Armenian and Azerbaijani foreign ministers in Moscow are scheduled for Friday at the invitation of Russia.
The restraint shown by Russia for almost two weeks is staggering for an event involving a formal military ally, Armenia, and taking place on the territory of the former Soviet Union. Because this is a room in which Russia is very allergic to interference from foreign forces. Was Moscow surprised by the new outbreak of war and is the behavior an expression of perplexity? Or is hesitation a tactic in view of the fact that Russia has very different, but never hostile, relations with all parties involved?
Bitterness for Armenia
Both will probably join. The outbreak of war cannot have struck Russia completely off guard. It also became clear that Turkey would like to play a bigger role alongside Azerbaijan. The Karabakh conflict is different in nature from other territorial conflicts in the former Soviet republics. It takes place between two states, and neither state leans sharply west. Commentator Alexander Baunow of the Moscow Carnegie Center even considers Azerbaijan to be an excellent example of a post-Soviet country that banned symbols of the past without causing a stir and chose an independent foreign policy course without throwing itself into the arms of the West or breaking with Moscow. The country, ruled in a familiar authoritarian style, remained important to Russia, not just as a buyer of weapons technology.
In a residential area of Stepanakert, firefighters try to put out a fire caused by the shelling.
Local residents seek refuge in a shelter in the Azerbaijani city of Terter.
It has always been more complicated with Armenia. Erewan entered an alliance with Russia out of sheer will to survive. Russia’s heavy economic dependence was not an Armenian wish either, but it is the result of the fact that the state is wedged between hostile neighbors Turkey and Azerbaijan. Armenia’s 2018 “velvet revolution” brought much bitterness to Russia in the already strained relationship. A change of power after a successful street protest, the criminal prosecution of the former elite closely associated with Moscow, and the opening up to Western non-governmental organizations hit Russia hard. But Pashinyan, who came to power during the revolution, never renounced the alliance with Russia.
The editor-in-chief of the Russian foreign broadcaster RT, Margarita Simonjan, who is closely connected with Russian politics and is of ethnic Armenian origin, gave an open idea of this bitterness in the summer. He listed all the Armenian sins against the security guarantor Moscow and suggested that such Armenia really did not deserve any support from Russia. Even now there are voices that see the Kremlin’s reluctance as a signal to the Armenian leadership: they are deliberately letting Azerbaijan and Turkey do their thing and they are cooking Armenia so that they can feel who they should be grateful to. Businessman Yevgeny Prigozhin (“Putin’s cook”), who can be used for many indirect messages and Kremlin actions, for example, clearly sided with Baku in a rare interview.
Putin’s inaction has limits
Erdogan’s calculated engagement, the deployment of Syrian mercenaries and the new internationalization of the conflict with all its consequences, however, cannot be seen by Putin in the long term. Alexander Baunow points out that Turkey and Russia are reconciling in Syria and Libya, despite opposing positions, because they keep each other clear against American or European interference. For this they accept clashes as in Idlib in Syria.
Russia and Turkey are creating a geopolitical space for each other. However, the South Caucasus is not Syria. Since its military intervention, Russia has also felt a force in order there. But in the South Caucasus, the claim to that role is much stronger and historically anchored. Erdogan’s arrival in the Caucasus during the Karabakh war is suddenly putting Russia’s foreign policy to the test.
View of a house in Stepanakert that was damaged in an Azerbaijani attack.
A wounded man receives medical attention after being fired on by Azerbaijani artillery.
