Lachin outweighs Brussels: Balance of Azerbaijani-Armenian settlement Analysis by Serhey Bohdan

On August 31, Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev and Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan had another meeting in Brussels. The Azerbaijani side spoke about the possible start of the negotiation of a peace treaty. But the Armenian leadership is trying to drag out the negotiations, the West is not averse to using the South Caucasus to get at Putin and Erdogan, while the Kremlin is also keen to take on the West in the region. Baku seems to be the only one fighting for peace south of the Caucasus range.

However, given the presence of a serious military force and a solid international position, this struggle, given some patience and consistency, has every chance of success. Events in Brussels were only a postscript to the Lachin events of last month.

Retreat from Lachin as a geopolitical "game over"

At an international conference in Shusha on August 27, the Azerbaijani presidential aide for foreign policy, Hikmet Hajiyev, attached importance to a meeting in Brussels: "We hope that this meeting will agree on the establishment of a working group to prepare the text of a peace agreement between Azerbaijan and Armenia. But we see the hesitation on the part of Armenia in terms of this process".

Indeed, Yerevan seems to have nowhere to retreat. The road from Yerevan to Khankendi via Lachin was closed to Armenian drivers on Tuesday, suggesting they use an alternative route. This happened after the Armenian side was forced to withdraw from Lachin and two surrounding villages on August 26, losing control not only of the road but also of the electricity and gas supply lines in the part of the Karabakh region of Azerbaijan that is within the zone of temporary responsibility of Russian peacekeepers.

The Armenian forces did not withdraw on their own, but as a result of the Azerbaijani military's "Revenge" operation in early August. This was certainly a response to the shelling, but it can hardly be regarded as a sudden impromptu action, but rather as a pre-prepared action to be used in the event of an escalation due to Yerevan's (and Moscow's) constant procrastination in implementing the agreements. After all, there is nothing more effective than a carefully prepared improvisation.

Baku, it must be said, has prepared for an emergency situation not only militarily. In fact, the army entered into action as soon as the road on which it was planning to transfer traffic flows was completed. Exactly one day before the start of the fighting, on August 2, the completion of the Azerbaijani part of the road, which is an alternative to the Lachin corridor, was announced, according to the agreements of the leaders of Azerbaijan, Russia, and Armenia of November 10, 2020. The Armenian side has barely begun building its eight kilometres of road.

The operation was also prepared diplomatically. Judge for yourself, Azerbaijani Defence Minister Zakir Hasanov had a telephone conversation with his Russian counterpart Sergei Shoigu on August, 2. By the way, Hasanov's previous conversation with Shoigu also curiously coincided with the liberation of the village of Farrukh. The operation was followed by an emergency meeting of the Russian Security Council on the situation in Karabakh on August 4 and the next day, on August 5, Putin received his Turkish counterpart Recep Tayyip Erdogan in Sochi and discussed the Karabakh issue with him. Neither did Moscow criticise Baku - although Russian publications, known for their support for Armenia, stated after Erdogan's meeting with Putin that "it appears that Azerbaijan will reduce its activity in the region".

The result of the August operation, however, was unambiguous. Baku coldly closed another chapter in the history of the Karabakh separatist project. Strategically, of course, it was closed by the war in 2020, which revealed something that had long been suspected, but because of the improbability of the conjecture, it did not fit in the mind. Radical nationalist circles in Armenia (like their "soul friends" in many post-Soviet countries) were promoting revanchist themes and drawing dubious schemes for their own enrichment, but they were not seriously engaged in strengthening the army. Therefore they simply had no chance against the Azerbaijani army. However, in geopolitical terms (in the original sense of the word, i.e. the connection between politics and geography) while Armenian forces controlled Lachin, the Karabakh separatist project continued to smolder.

The fact that Lachin was the key to Karabakh was clear to Armenian nationalists (even members of the Communist Party) a hundred years ago. The importance of Lachin was demonstrated again by events after the collapse of the USSR - Armenian radical formations began their large-scale expansion beyond the NKAO itself with the capture of Lachin on May 18, 1992. Of course, they then widened the corridor and, capturing the Kalbajar district, gained another road between Karabakh and Armenia.

In November 2020, Azerbaijan regained its land in the Kalbajar district and the separatist part of Karabakh had to grasp to Lachin corridor - officially the Lachin district came under Azerbaijani control on December 1, 2020, but Armenian armed forces continued to be present there. The regaining of control of the area in August this year cannot, therefore, be measured quantitatively - all Karabakh separatism has since moved to a lower level. Negotiating a peace treaty afterward seemed a logical step.

To Brussels for salvation

But nothing in history is inevitable. Even in the bunker in April 1945, Hitler was not unreasonably expecting the Germans to retaliate, as the Western allies were also having second thoughts about Nazi Germany at the time! In short, the Armenian leadership has retreated from Lachin but is trying to gain a foothold in world capitals, hoping to win back what it lost in Karabakh there. To do this they need to buy time, wait for a change of circumstances, or find some geopolitical combination in the West. This line has been reflected in the actions of Armenian diplomacy in recent months. For example, the current meeting between the two leaders only resulted in an agreement to continue "substantive talks" at the level of foreign ministers and to meet again in Brussels in November. As a result of the two previous Brussels meetings of the two heads of state, two commissions have been established - on the unblocking of transport communications and on the delimitation of the border. On the eve of the talks in the Belgian capital, members of the delimitation commission met in Moscow, but only "had a substantive exchange of views on further work".

Acting this way, it is possible to turn the negotiations into endless meetings and discussions. Alternatively, the option described by the well-known Armenian political scientist Benjamin Poghosyan in a conversation with the Moscow-based Kommersant newspaper could be implemented with the support of the Western powers. In his view, both the EU and the US would like to see a settlement process begin under some kind of scenario that would lead to the withdrawal of Russian peacekeepers from Karabakh at the end of the original mandate in 2025. Poghosyan presents a likely scenario: "The European Union is interested in Yerevan and Baku agreeing at talks in Brussels to Karabakh's autonomous status within Azerbaijan so that real negotiations can then begin on the parameters of that autonomy."

This option suits the Armenian side well. Firstly, in this elegant way, it takes the country further to the West - which, in fact, is one of its most important goals. Second, it brings the Karabakh issue back into the realm of international politics, whereas Baku considers the Karabakh issue no longer relevant to Azerbaijan's foreign policy. Thirdly, the subsequent 'real negotiations on the parameters of this autonomy' could be stretched over many years, allowing Armenian radical circles to once again rely on the 'Kosovo option', especially given that this would be done in concert with the West, which has pursued separatist projects in recent decades no worse than Putin.

Incidentally, as recently as March, Pashinyan said that it was necessary to "lower the bar on the Karabakh issue" and defend only the rights of the Armenian population in Azerbaijan, but after meetings in the West the Armenian leadership has again begun to refer to the need to resume the work of the OSCE Minsk Group and determine the "status of Karabakh". Pashinyan's office even managed to include a reference to the Minsk Group in a recent Bastille Day greeting to the French president! In diplomatic parlance, such appeals mean the desire to avoid substantive agreements by silencing the issue.

It is not only the peace treaty, the border, and the restoration of communications through Zangazur that are similarly delayed... Despite the existence of written agreements since November 2020 to withdraw the Armenian military at the same time as the deployment of Russian peacekeepers in Karabakh, this has not been done. Some time ago, Russian representatives promised that Armenian soldiers would withdraw by June, but on July 19 the secretary of Armenia's Security Council, Armen Grigoryan, stated that the remaining Armenian forces would withdraw from Karabakh in September.

After Azerbaijani sovereignty over the Ahgdam, Kalbajar, and part of Lachin districts was restored in December 2020-January 2021, the agreed transfer of the remaining territories under Armenian armed forces' control ceased. This led to expectations among Armenian nationalists that this would be the end of the matter.

Baku could have pushed Yerevan to implement many of these points long ago and the August operation is clear proof of this. But so far the Azerbaijani side has outplayed its opponents not by crushing them by force, but rather by multilateral strategic calculations. In this case, too, Baku was in no hurry, focusing on the need for a political solution with Armenia, and this delay is not a delay but a strategic pause to make possible a solution under which, as Hikmet Hajiyev recently said, Armenians can live in one state with Azerbaijanis. His words sparked a wave of angry comments among Armenian nationalists.

Their anger is understandable - Armenian radical organizations have long had problems in Armenia itself which such activists and ideologists have brought to the current sad state. These problems are also connected with some actions of Baku, which largely managed to avoid political processes destructive to normalization in Armenia. Not only was Pashinian not overthrown on the wave of a lost war (for the defeat of which, of course, other politicians bear the main responsibility), but he led his party to a new victory in the parliamentary elections. At a recent rally to remove Pashinyan from power in connection with the return of Lachin to Azerbaijan, the Armenian opposition was able to gather as many as 2,500 people in central Yerevan.

The West's own game

The settlement of Azerbaijani-Armenian relations came at a time of global confrontation. The Western establishment never misses an opportunity to instrumentalise the Karabakh issue. The meeting between Aliyev and Pashinyan took place in Brussels, the de facto capital of the EU and NATO, for a reason. It was hosted by the head of the European Council, Charles Michel. He even promised the journalists afterward that the parties would not only "continue" working on the peace agreement, but would even do it "more actively"; in particular, the foreign ministers will already be "working on the text". Incidentally, the next meeting of the delimitation commission will also take place in Brussels.

Washington is not inactive either. On May 25, the US offered the Armenian government assistance in delimiting the border with Azerbaijan. On July 15, a day before the talks between Azerbaijani and Armenian foreign ministers Jeyhun Bayramov and Ararat Mirzoyan, CIA director William Burns unexpectedly arrived in Yerevan.

In other words, the West is trying to take ownership of the settlement process between Azerbaijan and Armenia. Indeed, if a peace treaty is signed in Brussels, the significance of the Russian presence in the region will change as Russia loses its unique status as a mediator and peacemaker. After all, from Moscow's perspective, a peace treaty should complete the process of normalising relations in the region - in which Russia will be able to participate at least on the basis of its military presence, which is to a large extent due to the absence of a treaty. The EU wants to reverse the order and sign the peace treaty before normalisation, which will undermine Moscow's position in this very normalisation.

Moscow and Brussels have ample opportunities to upset the game of the opposing side in the region. But is there room to build some kind of constructive scenario? Despite their stated ambitions, both Russia and the EU currently lack the resources and tools to implement them. The Kremlin's main toolkit is power, but having waged a large-scale war with Ukraine (and increasingly with NATO), it is extremely uncomfortable with intervening in Caucasian affairs. On the other hand, the EU has promised 2 billion euros to Armenia, but in the current situation the countries of the West have less and less money and it is difficult to imagine them having any serious means for some kind of restructuring of the South Caucasus.

However, motives and forces will certainly be found to launch a political game. After all, by interfering in the settlement process between Baku and Yerevan, the EU wants to counteract not only Russian influence, although "Putin's shadow" is present in all calculations of the Brussels politicians. An equally important objective is to counter the growing influence of Türkiye, which, together with Azerbaijan, is reshaping the region between the Black Sea and the Caspian Sea, without asking the permission of the "all-knowing West" and Moscow. At the mention of Erdogan, the reaction of Western liberal elites is not much different from their reaction to Putin's name.

To sum up, the same laws of the jungle prevail in modern imperialist politics. Force (as the Russian experience shows, not only military force) decides who will be eaten, rather than a kind of international law, which has long been battered by both the East and the West. This should be the starting point for assessing "international mediation".

Karabakh could have turned into another Kosovo, South Ossetia, or Donbas and other pseudo-statelets. There were some prerequisites for this. What was missing was the main one - a mess in Azerbaijan's state system and the collapse of power on the ground. The Azerbaijani leadership was patiently preparing the means - military and non-military - and waiting for the right moment. It was only these efforts, made by Azerbaijan itself, that led to the "Kosovo-Donbass scenario" collapsing. The current mediation by global players should not obscure this fact.

As their previous 'credit history' shows, they (both those in the West and those in the East) will gladly turn Karabakh into another platform for resolving their own issues in a global showdown, not the issues of the peoples and countries of the South Caucasus, centered around the settlement and normalisation of relations between the neighbours - Azerbaijan, Armenia, and Türkiye.