If you’re tired of hearing about two ex-Soviet countries slugging it out with artillery, this story is not for you.
Armenia and Azerbaijan are at it again.
Azerbaijani forces shelled Armenia’s territory on Tuesday in a large-scale attack that killed at least 49 Armenian soldiers and fueled fears of even broader hostilities.
Azerbaijan and Armenia have been locked in a decades-old conflict over Nagorno-Karabakh, which is part of Azerbaijan but has been under the control of ethnic Armenian forces backed by Armenia since a separatist war there ended in 1994. Azerbaijan reclaimed broad swaths of Nagorno-Karabakh in a six-week war in 2020 that killed more than 6,600 people and ended with a Russia-brokered peace deal.
Moscow, which deployed about 2,000 troops to the region to serve as peacekeepers under the deal, moved quickly to broker a cease-fire on Tuesday morning, but it wasn’t immediately clear whether it was holding.
The hostilities erupted minutes after midnight, with Azerbaijani forces unleashing an artillery barrage and drone attacks in many sections of Armenian territory, according to the Armenian Defense Ministry.
Azerbaijan charged that its forces returned fire in response to “large-scale provocations” by the Armenian military, claiming that the Armenian troops planted mines and repeatedly fired on Azerbaijani military positions, resulting in unspecified casualties and damage to military infrastructure.
Azerbaijan’s ally Turkey also placed the blame for the violence on Armenia. Turkish Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu called for Yerevan to halt its “provocations” and Defense Minister Hulusi Akar condemned “Armenia’s aggressive attitude and provocative actions” following talks with their counterparts in Baku.
Speaking in parliament early Tuesday, Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan said that Azerbaijani shelling has killed at least 49 Armenian soldiers.
He said the Azerbaijani action followed his recent European Union-brokered talks in Brussels with Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev that revealed what he described as Azerbaijan’s uncompromising stand.
Christian Armenia has a long, unhappy history with Turkey, including genocide at the hands of Muslim Turks in the waning days of the Ottoman Empire. Like the Balkans, the Caucuses are an unstable cauldron of mixed ethno-religious-nationalism, with a side-order of Jihadism thrown in for good measure (the Islamic State – Caucasus Province, the successor to the Caucasus Emirate, has been relatively quit recently, but such groups seldom wither away entirely). Russia still occupies the parts of Georgia it conquered in 2008, but the blooding it’s taken in Ukraine has probably weakened its hand regionally. And coming food and energy security issues (Azerbaijan in energy rich, but Armenia is energy-poor) are likely to exacerbate tensions in the coming months.
Putin’s Russia may be receiving a well-deserved comeuppance in Ukraine, but its resulting weakness could very well result in interesting times for many ex-Soviet states.
Tags: Armenia, artillery, Azerbaijan, Caucasus Emirate, Foreign Policy, Georgia, Islamic State – Caucasus Province, Jihad, Military, Nagorno Karabakh, Russia, video
Azerbaijan is clearly taking advantage of the current Russian preoccupation with Ukraine and its recent sign of weakness.
This is very bad for Armenia. Although technically Azerbaijan is aligned with the Western powers and Armenia with Moscow, our sympathies should be with the Armenians who are the indigenous people in the region constantly subjected to aggression from the Turks and Azeris.
It’s truly sad that the geographical realities in the South Causcasus are that the Armenians have no real allies who can help them. The Russians are unreliable and subject the Armenians to domestic interference, while the West does nothing because of the current importance of our relations to Turkey and Azerbaijan.
If Peter Zeihan’s analysis of the last few days is correct, Russia has gone from a world superpower, to a local hegemon, to (if they lose Ukraine) not even a regional power.
This would mean countries all over the world, and especially in Asia, will readjust their strategic thinking b/c Russia is no longer a credible threat / ally.
This would mean … history is going to restart, in Asia. The various ‘stans and other countries will feel more free to act, and may start aligning with a new power (China, Europe, USA, etc) and or restart fights that had been buried.
I mean … I get the feeling Russia is going to be a minor state, with nukes. Not unlike Pakistan.
Picture a world in which Russia and Pakistan are level with each other. What changes because of that? Quite a bit.
The Armenians are some of the dumbest f*cking people in the world, when it comes to politics and dealing with their neighbors.
Everybody talks much trash about the Armenian Genocide by the Turks, which was a horrible thing on the scale of the Holocaust or the Holodomor. What they never, ever talk about was what led to the whole thing kicking off.
Prior to the events leading into that whole tragedy, the Armenians were a relatively successful ethnic minority within the Ottoman Empire. They were left the hell alone, and they were able to take high positions in the administration of the Ottomans because they were the “trusted outsiders” that the various factions in the Ottoman Empire preferred to have running things, rather than the constant internecine intra-Turk free-for-all that Ottoman politics was. The Armenians were trusted for hundreds of years as being honest brokers between the factions, even serving as guards for various important things in the Ottoman government.
Then came the long decline of the Ottomans. Sensing that the Empire was on its way out, the Russian Empire decided to stir up some trouble on their borders, and peel off whatever they could. One of the things they did was to gently “encourage” factions of Armenians who were easily swayed into playing political games there on the borderlands, betraying both the Armenians working for the Turks and the Turks themselves. They thought they could snaffle up independence and the whole irredentist Greater Armenia thing because of Ottoman weakness. Didn’t work out that way, and then when it all came crashing down inside the borders of Turkey, the (relatively) innocent victims were their fellow ethnic Armenians who had the misfortune to be inside Turkey while most of the f*ckwits who were playing with fire were safely outside the Ottoman’s reach.
The Armenians never, ever seem to learn. Don’t trust Russia; you fall for the siren song of being their proxies/patsies, you’re gonna get screwed. Hard. And, when they spent generations lording it over everyone else as a favored ethnicity inside the Soviet Union? LOL… Yeah, they’ve built up a huge debt of outright hatred and disdain. They were often the servitors of the regime; now they’re nobody’s friends, especially the Azerbaijanis. Lotta bills comin’ due, is all I’m sayin’.
I have to empathize with a lot of the victims of this crap, but ya know what? They should have picked a more realistic set of leaders, and not followed these idiots down the garden path. They’re gonna get screwed, before all this is over.
Central Asia is a lot like the former Yugoslavia and the rest of the Balkans: They produce way more history than they can consume, and so they wind up experiencing an awful lot of “historical moments”. Which sucks for everyone caught up in the machinery, but there ya go… You don’t want to be in the impact area? Get the hell off the X.
Russia is letting Azerbaijan attack Armenia – indeed, Russia WANTS it to attack Armenia – with which Russia and the CSTO have long had mutual defense treaties.
Russia has long been violating those treaties with Armenia, especially in 2020 and now.
Why?
Because Russia wants to step in and take FULL and total control of Armenia and cause PM Pashinyan to be deposed. And no, Russia is not “preoccupied” with the war in Ukraine. Please.
Russia wants Armenia to crawl on its hands and knees to Moscow to intervene against Azerbaijan.
The way to do that is for Russia to let Azerbaijan have its way with Armenia and attack and attack again.
Yes, Putin, Russia, and the CSTO are betraying Armenia. but they don’t care. That’s par for the course for Russia.
Most people do not understand something that is very simple and obvious:
Without Armenia, Russia’s sole ally and footprint in the Caucasus, Russia will lose the Caucasus, Caspian, and perhaps even Central Asia to the US, NATO, and the EU.
Armenia means more to Russia than does Ukraine if you simply look at a map. Europe is not going to attack Russia. Turkey and Azerbaijan WILL if they get the chance down the road.
Russia also fears pan-Turkism, a concept that Armenians have long known about but which so-called experts in the West have only recently paid attention to. How ridiculous is that?
By the same token, NATO and the US have long tried, with much success (Georgia, gas and oil pipelines, huge investments in Azerbaijan (such as Trump’s), etc.) to penetrate the Caucasus and push Russia out.
The lone obstacle to the US and NATO has been Armenia, though Armenia’s relations with the West have always been extraordinarily friendly.
One more thing: Armenia may be a flawed democracy but Azerbaijan and Turkey are beyond corrupt, inhumane, authoritarian, and provably (and obviously) support terrorist organizations such as ISIS.
No one in the world seriously doubts that last part, including the US State Department.
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