Politicizing a Tragedy

Moscow is not very comfortable with the fact that, once in a while, Armenian-Azerbaijani negotiations head towards consideration by Brussels.

The statements by a fringe group in Armenia would not have been sufficient cause for that kind of official reaction. There is indeed a growing anti-Russian sentiment in Armenia, avidly fanned by the Western-leaning forces, but mostly engendered by Russia’s blatant actions. In recent months, there have been many incursions on the territories of Karabakh and Armenia proper by Azerbaijani forces, in plain view of Russian peacekeeping forces, and yet the Kremlin has turned a blind eye to them. Armenia’s correct protests regarding Russian peacekeepers’ inaction during those provocations were ridiculed by Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov at a press conference in Cambodia.

After the 44-Day War, in an interview given to an Armenian news outlet (1^st Channel), President Vladimir Putin’s alter ego, Russian analyst and top strategics Alexander Dugin (whose daughter was just killed in a terrorist attack) bluntly claimed that Armenia did not keep its side of the bargain and forced President Putin to engineer the 44-Day War. He revealed that former President Serzh Sargsyan’s administration had promised to Ilham Aliyev, through the good offices of the Russian president, that Armenia was ready to cede the five regions it had taken as insurance back to Azerbaijan, but after the Velvet Revolution of 2018, Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan reneged on that promise.

But most importantly, a crucial summit is approaching where historic decisions may be made. On August 31, Presidents Putin and Aliyev will be meeting with Prime Minister Pashinyan. Armenia’s political establishment is apprehensive that once again the Russian president may sell out Armenia to Azerbaijan.

At issue is the Zangezur Corridor in Armenia’s Syunik province, linking Nakhichevan and Azerbaijan with Turkey. Despite public assurances by Moscow that the corridor would not compromise Armenia’s sovereignty, indications are that Mr. Putin will pressure Pashinyan to give in. Indeed, Mr. Lavrov had stated that “there should not be any equivocation that the roads and corridors to be opened will remain under the control of their respective governments.”

Mr. Putin’s motivation to cede the corridor to Azerbaijan goes beyond Armenia; it is a move to hurt Iran. Russia has weaponized its energy resources to counteract Western sanctions in light of the former’s war against Ukraine. As the Iran nuclear deal is becoming a reality, Tehran will turn out to be a real competitor to Russia by selling oil and gas to the West, thus blunting Russia’s most potent weapon. And Iran is as wary as Armenia over the control of the Zangezur Corridor by Azerbaijan and Turkey.

Although Iran extended diplomatic courtesies to Baku by congratulating Azerbaijan after its victory in 2020 “for recovering its historic territory,” it was also a loser along with Armenia, as Israel, a close ally of Azerbaijan, will have a broader area to conduct surveillance activities from Azerbaijan over Iran, not to speak of the latent rivalry between Azerbaijan and Iran over historic territory. Azerbaijan openly claims two regions in Iran where ethnic Turks reside while Iran claims Azerbaijan’s territory was amputated from the motherland.

In this game, Baku plays the Turkic card of demographic fault lines to entice Iranian-Azerbaijanis, while Iran plays the Shia religious card. Shia extremists have become very active in Azerbaijan and as the world witnessed only a few weeks ago, they literally took over the Azerbaijani embassy in London for a few hours.

As we can see, there is a global confrontation in Armenia and in the region and a simple protest by Russian has deep political reverberations in Armenia and in all of the Caucasus region.