Ukrainian journalist: Armenians use disinformation rhetoric against Azerbaijan

Claims about Azerbaijan’s alleged genocide towards Armenians are deliberately wrong just as the denial of genocide, which is taking place regarding 45 million Ukrainians, National University of Kyiv-Mohyla Academy professor Taras Kuzio in an article published by Gazeta.ua, Caliber.Az reports.

"The UN is wrong about the genocide taking place against the 50,000 Armenian population of the Garabagh region of Azerbaijan. And it is even more wrong to deny the genocide taking place against 45 million Ukrainians. Mikhail Podolyak, a senior adviser to President Vladimir Zelenskyy, accused the UN of becoming a lobbyist for Russian interests.

The Armenians' use of the term ‘genocide’ is taken directly from the Kremlin's toolkit of propaganda and disinformation. Russia's invasions of Georgia in 2008 and Ukraine in 2022 were based by the Russians on fake news claiming that Georgians and Ukrainians were conducting genocide against South Ossetia and Donbas respectively. Armenians use the same Kremlin disinformation rhetoric to falsely claim that Azerbaijan is committing genocide in Garabagh.

Ironically, Armenia misuses the term ‘genocide’ because Armenian forces committed numerous war crimes and human rights violations during the First Garabagh War. These war crimes are not subject to investigation by the International Criminal Court [ICC] because they occurred prior to its establishment in 2002.

Armenian forces have ethnically cleansed between 750,000 and 1 million Azerbaijanis from Armenia and the 20 per cent of Azerbaijani territory they occupied for nearly three decades. Some 4,000 Azerbaijani soldiers and civilians were missing and presumed killed during the First Garabagh War. Armenian occupation forces laid hundreds of thousands of mines, destroyed numerous cultural, historical and religious buildings and desecrated cemeteries. Azerbaijan and Ukraine are the most mined countries in the world.

The small Armenian minority in Garabagh is under pressure because it refuses to recognise that the Garabagh region is Azerbaijan's sovereign territory. The 50,000 Armenians in Garabagh are holding 3 million Armenians and 10 million Azerbaijanis hostage, preventing Yerevan from agreeing to sign a peace treaty with Baku.

Garabagh Armenians have refused to honour the ceasefire agreement signed at the end of the Second Garabagh War in November 2020. The ceasefire agreement clearly stated that Armenian forces - both regular and paramilitary - should withdraw from Azerbaijan at the same time as Russian peacekeepers were deployed in Garabagh. This has not happened, and Yerevan has continued to illegally send military equipment and new forces with the covert support of the Russian peacekeeping forces in Garabagh.

Nikol Pashinyan was the Armenian prime minister for five years and is therefore directly responsible for the country’s failure to implement the ceasefire agreement by illegally maintaining military formations in Garabagh. By illegally supplying military formations in Garabagh, Pashinyan is not committed to the peace treaty.

None of the articles defining genocide in international law apply to the policies pursued against Garabagh Armenians. Nevertheless, Luis Moreno Ocampo, the former chief prosecutor of the ICC, wrote a report at the request of the head of the Garabagh Armenians claiming to have ‘reasonable grounds to believe that genocide is being committed against Armenians in Karabakh’.    

‘There are no crematoriums here and no machete attacks. Hunger is the invisible weapon of genocide. Without immediate drastic changes, this group of Armenians will be wiped out in a matter of weeks,’ he said.

The false claim that Azerbaijan is the cause of the famine is ironic as Armenia has never recognised the 1933 Holodomor in Ukraine as genocide, unlike 34 other countries around the world. The Holodomor was a famine instigated by the Stalinist regime that killed more than 4 million Ukrainians.

A counter-report by British expert Rodney Dixon called Ocampo's claim about the famine ‘fundamentally flawed’" and one that distorts the ICC proceedings.

‘There is no evidence to support the defining element of genocide, which has a high threshold in terms of international law - a specific intent to physically destroy a group in whole or in part. The references in the Conclusion do not address this cornerstone requirement. It is reckless on the part of the expert to make accusations of genocide without any evidence,’ Dixon writes.

Ocampo's opinion is ‘clearly selective with respect to the 'facts' to which it refers. For example, it does not address Azerbaijan's proposal for an alternative transport road, the Aghdam-Khankendi route, to supply ethnic Armenians living in Garabagh.’

Furthermore, ‘relevant factual circumstances that clearly undermine the conclusions of the opinion piece are conveniently glossed over and not mentioned. The statement is thus far from being a balanced and comprehensive expert document’.

The five acts that internationally define genocide are: killing, inflicting serious harm, deliberately creating physically destructive living conditions, imposing birth control measures, measures and forcibly transferring children to another group.

None of these five definitions of genocide is being undertaken by Azerbaijan against Armenians in Garabagh, but all five are being undertaken by Russia against Ukrainians. Reports by the Washington-based New Lines Institute and Montreal-based Raoul Wallenberg Centre for Human Rights state that Russia's genocidal plan ‘to partially destroy the Ukrainian national group can be demonstrated by the incitement to genocide underlying the current invasion, or through patterns and methods of atrocities suggestive of their policies in the war.’

The ICC has issued arrest warrants for Russian President Vladimir Putin and Maria Lvova-Belova, the Russian Presidential Commissioner for Children's Rights. The ICC has never investigated or considered indicting any Azerbaijani leaders.

Russian acts of genocide against Ukraine included mass killings, deliberate attacks on shelters, evacuation routes and humanitarian corridors, indiscriminate bombing of residential areas, blockades of populated areas by the military and deliberate and systematic creation of life-threatening conditions, destruction of vital infrastructure, attacks on medical facilities, destruction and seizure of essential supplies, humanitarian aid and grain, rape and sexual violence against children, women and men, as well as forced displacement of Ukrainians.

The Washington Institute for the Study of War wrote: ‘Putin is likely setting the stage for forced cultural assimilation of displaced Ukrainians in Russia to erase their Ukrainian cultural identity’. 3.5 million Ukrainians have been deported to Russia after being processed through filtration camps and placed in Russian ‘adaptation centres’ where they are subjected to Russification and cultural assimilation.

Unlike Russia's denial of the existence of Ukrainians, Azerbaijan has never denied the existence of the Armenian nation. Azerbaijani leaders and media have never used Russian-style genocidal discourse against Ukrainians, denying the existence of Armenians.

Claims that Azerbaijan is committing genocide against Armenians are patently false. Baku simply insisted that the Armenian minority in Garabagh recognise Azerbaijan's sovereignty and comply with the provisions of the 2020 ceasefire agreement. In contrast, Russian media and political discourse openly proclaim its goal of genocide of Ukrainians, while the actions of the Russian military realise this genocidal goal.

The UN is wrong to claim that there is genocide against Armenians in Garabagh and even more wrong to deny that there is genocide against Ukrainians. This approach discredits the UN as a professional and respected international organisation," Kuzio wrote.