How Charles Michel waded into a minefield in Nagorno-Karabakh

The heart of the problem was that the people in the room simply weren’t qualified to deal with the conflict they had waded into. Wars in and around Europe for almost the entire post-World War II history of the continent had been dealt with either by individual member countries, by the U.S. or, more recently, by NATO. There simply wasn’t the institutional knowledge or understanding of how to conduct this kind of high-stakes foreign policy among officials in the European Council or the European External Action Service.

In the arena of Western politics where they’d cut their teeth, the worst imaginable outcome was that a poorly phrased missive might rile an EU country’s prime minister or upset an industry lobby group. Now, they’d inserted themselves into a bitter ethnic dispute where the worst thing that could happen was somebody burning down your house and cutting your head off. That was simply unimaginable for career diplomats who put total faith in the idea that no problem was too big to be sorted out over a plate of sandwiches in a Brussels meeting room.

And while the EU had been represented in talks over other international crises, like the Dayton Accords that ended the Bosnian War, it had played second fiddle to more serious diplomatic services like those of the US, France and Britain. Now, Brussels thought it had what it took to run the show.

That paradigm counted doubly for Michel. His team constantly talked up his credentials as the former prime minister of Belgium. But being at the helm of a tiny Western European nation with no notable active foreign policy conflicts or international disputes did not instantly turn a lifelong centrist politician into a titan on the world stage. Worse still, he wasn’t even a titan in his own office.

As European Commission president, von der Leyen wielded far more practical power than Michel did in his largely symbolic role. And she was set on doing her gas deal with Baku, no matter whether it compromised Michel’s ability to act as a mediator or not. The pair had a famously fractious relationship, both vying to position themselves as the true owner of key issues like foreign affairs. In 2021, during a joint meeting with Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, von der Leyen was visibly shocked when her Belgian colleague darted in to grab the only available chair opposite the Turkish president, relegating her to a nearby couch.

But, as the offensive began, triggering the mass exodus from Nagorno- Karabakh, Michel dropped what had been his flagship issue faster than anyone could have expected. Apart from an initial call for restraint and respect for the rights of the Karabakh Armenians on Twitter, he almost never again commented on the issue publicly.

Through the 24 hours of fighting, and the four days of chaos and uncertainty that followed, those in the Nagorno-Karabakh security services had tried to do their jobs as best they could, coordinating the response and tracking the enemy troops getting closer and closer to the capital. Now they’d done all they could. Ruben Petrosyan had left the office to try and gather what he could from his house, in a suburb where there had been sightings of Azerbaijani forces.

There was a suitcase by the door, stuffed with all the pictures Nouné had taken down off the walls, along with documents and some essentials for their children. It had been there since after the 2020 war. Now, friends, cousins and colleagues were ringing around desperately trying to work out how to make their escape. The Facebook pages and message groups that they’d used to swap scant supplies during the blockade suddenly lit up again.

“Doesn’t anyone have two liters of petrol? That’s how much it should take to get to Kornidzor.”

“Who has a truck that can carry furniture? I can pay.”

“Is anyone from Berdashen village? My mother lives there and I can’t get in touch with her.”

Already having been let down by Russia, the murderous, disinterested state that had once claimed to be their ally, other Nagorno-Karabakh Armenians began wondering whether they had been truly left to fend for themselves. After 24 hours on the road fleeing his homeland, a 58-year-old former security guard called Spartak had some questions of his own.

“Everyone is saying they care about us, but where are they?” he asked, sitting in the leafy garden of a hotel serving as an emergency shelter. “Where is France? Where is America? Where is Charles Michel?”

(Ashes of Our Fathers: Inside the Fall of Nagorno-Karabakh By Gabriel Gavin was published Jan. 9, 2025, by Hurst and Oxford University Press. Gabriel Gavin covered the fall of Nagorno-Karabakh for POLITICO. The above is an excerpt from the book.)