Lachin clashes: Pashinyan's vain hopes for EU mission
Serhey Bohdan's analysis

ANALYTICS  17 April 2023 - 14:11

Last week saw some of the most serious clashes since 2022 on the notional border between Azerbaijan and Armenia. They took place against the background of the EU Police-Civilian Observation Mission operating in Armenia. There were initial fears about this mission that it could be used by revanchist Armenian politicians to internationalize their disputes with Baku, "re-freeze" the Karabakh conflict, and salvage the expansionist project.

A statement by Armen Grigoryan, secretary of the Armenian Security Council, following the fighting reinforces such fears. He announced, "We expect Brussels to take steps to prevent provocations by Azerbaijan... The incident near Tegh village (Dygh - ed.) is also a challenge for EU observers, as the deployment of EU observers is expected to be a deterrent for Azerbaijan". According to Grigoryan, "provocations" are measures taken by Baku to prevent attempts to sabotage the peace process and strengthen the military potential of the separatist formations.

There are no other roads anymore

A total of seven servicemen from both sides have been killed in fighting this week on the Azerbaijan-Armenia border in the Lachin direction. On April 11, the Azerbaijani military noted the accumulation of Armenian army manpower and equipment in the area. It seemed that the Armenian side was preparing for serious action and might try to change even the strategic situation in the confrontation with the neighbouring country.

Another escalation in the Lachin direction looks quite logical given the paramount strategic importance of communications in the Lachin area to sustain the remnants of the separatist forces in Karabakh. Without Lachin, Armenian separatism in Karabakh has no chance since the extremist circles in Armenia have not created alternative supply or survival routes for their project in more than two decades of occupation.

Once the separatist gangs had lost all ability to use the Lachin corridor road between Armenia and Khankendi, they began to use unpaved country roads to bypass the highway itself as soon as weather conditions got better and spring arrived. This did not go unnoticed by the Azerbaijani military and led to the clash with the separatists on March 5. It did not put an end to the separatists' attempts to bypass the Azerbaijani military-controlled road. On the contrary, Baku stated that the Armenian forces began to travel along this route accompanied by Russian peacekeepers, as well as repair those roads.

Instead of continuing a car hunt fraught with human casualties, the Azerbaijani side engaged in a substantive solution to the problem. On March 25, the Azerbaijani Ministry of Defence claimed to have taken control of the dirt roads to the north of the Lachin road. It later emerged that on that day the Azerbaijani army had withdrawn and entrenched itself in the villages of Allahgulular and Zamanpeyesi in the Shusha district, as well as on the surrounding heights. A quick glance at the map shows the strategic importance of these lands between Lachin and the remnants of the separatist forces in the Khankendi area, as well as near the roads between these settlements - in the mountainous terrain, this means complete control of the area. The report of the Azerbaijani Defenсe Ministry, dated March 30, is worth considering in the same vein, "In connection with the commissioning of the new Lachin road, several overlooking heights, main and secondary roads, as well as the vast border area between the villages Jagazur and Zabukh of the Lachin district were taken under control. Baku has thus severely curtailed opportunities for supplying the separatists from Armenia."

At the same time, at the end of March, the Azerbaijani military, according to Russian peacekeepers, "began engineering the post" on the road between the villages of Khalfali and Turshsu. Moreover, even Russian media, which are not particularly sympathetic to Azerbaijan, admits that "this territory belongs to the zone of responsibility of Russian peacekeepers, but when Armenian forces began actively using it, the Azerbaijanis set up a roadblock there." There is no doubt that sooner or later a checkpoint will be set up at the entrance to the Lachin district of Azerbaijan.

Yerevan has no military means to thwart these moves. Not only are there no signs of a radical modernisation of the army, but there are also hardly enough people willing to fight for expansionist plans. Back in November 2020, President Aliyev claimed that more than 10,000 soldiers fled the Armenian army during the war. But maybe he is a person of interest and exaggerated the figures? But no, recently the wife of Armenian prime minister Anna Hakobyan mentioned that during the 44-day war Armenia had 11 thousand deserters, and therefore she created a detachment of women to shame the men. Add to this the scandals in the military leadership of the separatists - the case of their former commander Mikayel Arzumanyan proceeded to the Anti-Corruption Court, and the case of some other "high-ranking officer" accused of withdrawal from Shusha proceeded to trial.

What does "withdrawal of troops" mean

With no military solution, the Armenian establishment is relying on a diplomatic one, and in a subtle "Byzantine" style. On Thursday, after the fighting, Pashinyan announced at a government meeting, "We are also ready for the opening of regional economic and transport links, based on the principles we announced earlier. We are also ready to delineate borders on the basis of agreements in Prague and Sochi." The Armenian premier also made another statement, which is more befitting an Aboriginal leader in the service of white colonialists than a leader of an independent state. He did not dare to state his sovereign opinion, but referred entirely to the EU, saying: "Azerbaijan's actions are provocative and contradict the Prague and Sochi statements. Regarding the political assessment of the border situation, I think that the message spread by the European Union, where the borderline of 1991 is emphasized, is essential. We are talking about the administrative border between the Armenian SSR and the Azerbaijani SSR, which was transformed into a state border on December 21, 1991, by the declaration in Alma-Ata. This border must be respected, the EU statement says."

Pashinyan may be hoping that Yerevan can eventually benefit from such servile pro-Western behaviour. His point became clear when he suggested the "mirror" withdrawal of troops from the border with Azerbaijan if Baku does the same. At first glance, it looks like an interesting option, but in conditions of Azerbaijan's military superiority and the continuing consequences of the defeat of Armenian forces, such a withdrawal - even "mirror" - of the Azerbaijani army units from the border means a clear strengthening of Armenia's position. After all, Yerevan no longer has its own military tools, and it does not have foreign ones yet.

Moreover, in the current situation such demilitarization, with only Russian peacekeepers in the region, would in fact mean not only the preservation of Karabakh separatism but also the possibility of its new rise. In essence, it would recreate, in a reduced form, the situation of Operation Ring in 1991, in which the Soviet security forces failed to neutralise Armenian extremist groups in the absence of a clear political will from the centre and then, with the collapse of the USSR, the absence of Azerbaijani military forces in areas adjacent to Armenia helped Armenian nationalists to launch a large-scale territorial expansion in the region.

But back to Pashinyan, who, when speaking of mutual demilitarization, stressed "We have been expressing our readiness since 2021, and such actions stem from the aforementioned agreements in Prague and Sochi," but did not say a word about the fact that these steps make sense in terms of historical justice and the restoration of a unified region only after the overcoming of the legacy of territorial expansion, i.e. the withdrawal of the remains of the Karabakh separatist project. In contrast, Pashinyan has now demanded, among other things, that Azerbaijan "unblocks" the Lachin road i.e. restores the supply of the separatist armed forces!

Armen Grigoryan, secretary of the Armenian Security Council, clarified his prime minister's position on the same day. In an interview with CivilNet he announced: "We will not negotiate on the Lachin issue, everything has been specified there for a long time, and Russia should withdraw Azerbaijan from the corridor." Further, "there is a need for an international presence in Artsakh, as many security issues are not resolved despite the Russian presence". In other words, hopes are pinned on the West.

But does the West need it? Doubts arise after reading a recent article in Politico about the EU police-civilian mission in Armenia along the border with Azerbaijan. It quoted a high-ranking EU diplomatic official who wished to remain anonymous as saying: "We are sharing all relevant information on patrols and so on with Azerbaijan because we don't want any issues". Armenian opposition politicians, particularly MPs from the Sargsyan's Republican Party, lamented: "Armenia sees no change in EU policy after the launch of the EU civilian observer mission on the border with Azerbaijan. Obviously, many in the Armenian establishment had hoped that the mission could be the beginning of the West's engagement with its problems and pushing Russia out of Armenia. But the price for the West was too high and the benefits (rivalry with Russia at the back of Eurasia) too negligible. Probably suspecting that it would not be possible to push such a deal through, Armenian leaders have even activated the meaningless (in the context of the confrontation between Russia and the West) mechanism of the OSCE Minsk Group. On Friday, Grigoryan met with the American "co-chair" of the OSCE Minsk Group, Luis Bono.

Putin's arrest in Yerevan

Pashinyan has long been trying to sell this deal - a change of geopolitical allegiance in return for Western involvement in Armenia's regional problems. He does this by lowering the level of relations with the Kremlin, and recently another dispute has erupted between Yerevan and Moscow over Armenia's possible participation in NATO exercises.

However, all this fades away in comparison to the topic of the hypothetical arrest of the Russian president in Yerevan. Here again, the Armenian leadership has played in true Byzantine style. Having signed the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court (ICC) back in 1998, it then happily forgot about it. On March 24, just a week after the ICC issued an arrest warrant for Putin, Armenia's Constitutional Court declared its obligations under the statute constitutional, finally making ratification possible. Yerevan began to argue that it was only going to prosecute Azerbaijani citizens with the help of the ICC, though this was impossible because Azerbaijan had not signed the Statute. The Armenian leaders accompanied all this with other significant gestures - on the one hand, they tried to sell Moscow the idea of signing some kind of agreement that would allow the Russian leader to visit Yerevan without fear of arrest! On the other hand, one of the deputies of Pashinyan's party noted that if Putin appears in Yerevan, he will have to be arrested... Other representatives of the party began to refute him. Together it looked like a manipulation, which will allow both to cajole West and to "sell air" to Moscow by signing a fictitious agreement for quite real concessions of the Russian side. Russia was furious and delivered menacing messages to Yerevan through all channels, but in the end, as of April 5, the Russian authorities only blocked access for Armenian dairy products to the Russian market.

To hold Russia responsible for the collapse of the Karabakh would be a "killing two birds with one stone" solution for the current Armenian leadership, which does not generally mind getting rid of this bizarre nationalist experiment and moving towards the West. That is why on March 14, Pashinyan publicly proclaimed, "Russia is the guarantor of Nagorno Karabakh's security," which the Russian Foreign Ministry flatly refused, saying, "Russia will leave Armenia's attempts to put responsibility for the security of Nagorno-Karabakh on third countries on the conscience of Armenian leadership".

Resolution of Armenia's problems and the "Fall of Constantinople"

In the above-mentioned interview, the secretary of the Security Council of Armenia Grigoryan stated that an escalation is possible, which, he said, is prepared by Azerbaijan. However, Azerbaijan's actions are only a reaction to the existing situation - the remnants of the separatist project in Karabakh and the procrastination by the Armenian leadership to normalise the region. The current situation is a direct consequence of the territorial seizures of radical Armenian nationalists.

As for the Armenian establishment's hopes for foreign assistance, they have not changed since the Armenian nationalists discovered the benefits of collaboration with distant "Christian" empires in the century before last. And like the words of some ancient dashnak or gnchak, the pathetic statement of the First Minister of Foreign Affairs of Armenia, the main Armenian liberal (!) Raffi Hovhannisyan was recently heard at an international conference: "The blockade of Artsakh should have the same effect for Europe as the siege and fall of Constantinople (in 1453!), perhaps they don't feel it now, but they will feel it later."

However, these motives no longer work abroad. The pro-Western government of Pashinyan is not doing well in the Western direction, especially if we compare it with the results of the Azerbaijani government, which is not trying to please the Western establishment at all costs. Just to compare, this week the Armenian Deputy Prime Minister Mher Grigoryan traveled to Washington. He was given a chastening lecture on the inadmissibility of circumventing the anti-Russian sanctions through Armenia. At the same time Ramiz Tairov, commander of the Azerbaijani air force, paid a visit to the US to discuss cooperation in the training of Azerbaijani military pilots. Yerevan has failed to turn the West against Baku - the latter has consistently maintained a balance in international politics and emphasised its willingness to negotiate peace through the mediation of both Russia and the West.

Events near Lachin showed that Baku can and will lead the process out of the impasse even by force if it is led there by diplomatic intrigues and sabotage of negotiations. But in the end, the solution to the problems of both Armenia and the region is still linked to the search for ways to coexist and cooperate. And the formula is obvious - "peace for land". Land that had once been seized and which had brought neither greatness nor wealth to Armenia.

Caliber.Az