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.