Azerbaijan’s military offensive in Nagorno-Karabakh comes as Armenia’s ally Moscow focuses on Ukraine

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For a brief while, Vladimir Putin’s Russia was able to behave like the superpower it once was. To the chagrin of Moscow’s ally Armenia, and the gain of Armenia’s historic rival Azerbaijan, that era is once again over.

In 2014, the Russian army flexed its rebuilt post-Soviet muscle by seizing Crimea from Ukraine and igniting a proxy war in the country’s eastern Donbas region. A year later, Mr. Putin’s air force arrived in Syria and decisively tipped that country’s civil war in favour of Bashar al-Assad’s dictatorship.

And when Azerbaijan and Armenia went to war in 2020 over the disputed region of Nagorno-Karabakh, it was their big neighbour in Moscow that imposed a ceasefire that saw Russian peacekeepers deployed between the two sides.

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Both Armenia and Azerbaijan are former Soviet republics that have long disputed ownership of the region.

THE GLOBE AND MAIL, SOURCE: TILEZEN;

OPENSTREETMAP CONTRIBUTORS; HIU

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Both Armenia and Azerbaijan are former Soviet republics that have long disputed ownership of the region.

THE GLOBE AND MAIL, SOURCE: TILEZEN;

OPENSTREETMAP CONTRIBUTORS; HIU

GEORGIA

RUSSIA

Tbilisi

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ARMENIA

Baku

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Both Armenia and Azerbaijan are former Soviet republics that have long disputed ownership of the region.

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THE GLOBE AND MAIL, SOURCE: TILEZEN; OPENSTREETMAP CONTRIBUTORS; HIU

Russia’s brief second life as a great power came to an end with Mr. Putin’s disastrous decision to launch a full-scale invasion of Ukraine early last year. The war has proven an enormous folly, one that has seen the Russian army – sometimes ranked as the second-best in the world, after that of the United States – humbled by a combination of Ukrainian determination and Western technology. By some estimates, Russia has had upwards of 80,000 soldiers killed and three times that many injured. It has also lost more than 2,000 tanks in just over 18 months of escalated fighting.

Not only is Russia now losing some of the territory it initially seized in Ukraine, it finds itself unable to project power anywhere else. Former British defence minister Ben Wallace estimated earlier this year that 97 per cent of Russia’s army was committed in Ukraine, while the head of Norway’s armed forces said the number of Russian troops near his country’s border was “20 per cent or less” of what it was prior to the invasion of Ukraine. Under Western sanctions, the Russian military is so overstretched that Mr. Putin – lacking allies – has been forced to seek military assistance from the beleaguered likes of North Korea and Iran.

Azerbaijan, which never fully accepted the written-in-Moscow ceasefire that prevented it from retaking the whole of Nagorno-Karabakh just when victory seemed within reach three years ago, appears to have chosen this moment of Russian weakness to finish what it started.

The “anti-terrorist operation” that Baku launched Tuesday looked very much like a full-scale offensive aimed at retaking Nagorno-Karabakh, which is internationally recognized as Azeri territory but is populated by 140,000 ethnic Armenians who have lived autonomously under Yerevan’s protection ever since Armenia triumphed in another war with Azerbaijan in the 1990s.

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The Armenian-backed autonomous government in Nagorno-Karabakh said at least 25 people were killed and 138 injured Tuesday in the first hours of the Azeri assault, while Azerbaijan said it had captured more than 60 Armenian checkpoints and destroyed as many as 20 military vehicles. The claims by both sides could not be independently verified.

Videos posted to social media, however, showed civilians in the regional capital of Stepanakert running for cover as artillery boomed in the background. Protesters quickly gathered in the centre of Yerevan to demand that the Armenian government take action to defend their ethnic kin.

Azerbaijan said it launched the attack after six of its citizens were killed by land mines, which it blamed on “illegal Armenian armed groups.” A statement from the office of President Ilham Aliyev, carried by Azerbaijan’s official news agency, said the offensive would continue “until the end,” unless Armenian forces in Nagorno-Karabakh surrendered.

Shortly after the fighting escalated, Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan called for Russian peacekeepers to “act” to protect the population of Nagorno-Karabakh from “ethnic cleansing.” But Moscow seemed caught off-guard, with Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova saying that Azerbaijan had informed Russian forces on the ground of its intentions only “minutes” before the offensive began.

Amid reports that the Russian peacekeeping contingent – initially 2,000 men – had also been depleted so troops and equipment could be redeployed to Ukraine, Moscow has for months ignored Armenian requests to intervene and forcibly lift an undeclared Azeri blockade of the so-called Lachin corridor, the only route via which people and supplies can travel between Armenia and Nagorno-Karabakh. The ability of the remaining Russian forces to stop a full-scale Azeri offensive, if that is what’s happening, is likely even more limited.

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The attack also comes at a time when Mr. Pashinyan is highly unpopular in the Kremlin. When Russia – a sworn ally of Armenia’s via the six-country Collective Security Treaty Organization – did nothing about the Lachin corridor blockade, Armenia hosted joint exercises with the U.S. military that began on Sept. 11 and were supposed to conclude Wednesday. While the numbers involved were small – 85 U.S. troops and 175 Armenian soldiers – the drills were denounced by Russia as “unfriendly.”

The truth is that, with Russia distracted and unable to protect its allies, Armenia needs other friends. Azerbaijan has an army several times the size of Armenia’s and has used decades of high oil revenues to build a large technological advantage over its foe. It also has the support of Turkey, which has sought to build its influence among the Muslim populations of the Caucasus region at Moscow’s expense.

France, meanwhile, has emerged as the loudest defender of predominantly Christian Armenia. Paris declared Tuesday that it was working with its partners to prepare a strong response to Azerbaijan’s “unacceptable offensive.” France, Turkey and the U.S. – NATO members all – look likely to be the arbiters of whatever happens next in Nagorno-Karabakh, with Mr. Putin forced to watch from the sidelines as another part of the old Soviet empire slides further out of his grasp.