by Silvia Boltuc * –
In recent months, the South Caucasus has once again become strongly destabilized. After protests in Georgia over a controversial bill that would have required some organizations receiving foreign funding to register as “foreign agents,” Armenia and Azerbaijan may be on the verge of escalation again.
On March 25, 2023, Azerbaijan violated the terms of the November 9, 2020 agreement by crossing the demarcation line in the Shusha region and taking under the control of the Azerbaijani army several high ground between the villages of Jaghazur and Zabukh, as well as a large area along the border. Given concerns of losing Turkey’s support if Recep Tayyip Erdogan is defeated in the upcoming presidential elections in May 2023, Azerbaijan may consider conducting an attack against Armenia soon.
On March 31, 2023, Yury Shuvalov, spokesman of the Collective Security Treaty Organization Secretariat, said that the CSTO is ready to send a mission to the Armenian-Azerbaijani border to ensure Armenia’s security. On 5 April 2023, the official spokeswoman of the Russian Foreign Ministry Maria Zakharova said that the Russian side is satisfied that Armenia remains interested in accepting CSTO peacekeepers. Such decisions are coordinated and approved at the highest level by the decision of the Collective Security Council, confirms Zakharova, and concludes that the timing of the possible deployment of the CSTO mission in Armenia depends on the Armenian side.
The mission represents a turning point after the CSTO refused to intervene following the Azerbaijani aggression on Armenian sovereign territory in September 2022. In that context, Armenia requested a special session of the CSTO Permanent Council to discuss the military aggression of Azerbaijan. Organization spokesman Vladimir Zainetdinov replied that the CSTO is against the use of force on the Armenian-Azerbaijan borders, underlining that the organization considers only political and diplomatic methods to resolve the contradictions between Baku and Yerevan, as happened on November 9, 2020, when the ceasefire ending the 2020 Nagorno-Karabakh conflict was signed under Russian supervision.
Armenia has since repeatedly expressed dissatisfaction with the Russian-led body. Speaking at a CSTO summit in Yerevan on 23 November 2022, Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan stressed how depressing it was that Armenia’s membership of the CSTO had failed to contain Azerbaijani aggression, adding that this had greatly damaged the image of the Organization both in Armenia and abroad. Furthermore, Pashinyan reiterated that Armenia had supported Kazakhstan in early January when Kazakh President Qasym-Zhomart Toqaev called for CSTO troops to enter his country following unprecedented anti-government protests.
Faced with recent Azerbaijani policies that have become more aggressive, the CSTO has had to keep faith with its statute. If for Nagorno-Karabakh the question is more controversial since it concerns disputed territories, the border of Armenia is, in fact, recognized internationally.
Armenians in Artsakh/Nagorno-Karabakh have been isolated since December 2022 by the blockade imposed by Baku on the Lachin corridor, the only road link for Armenians residing in the disputed territories with Armenia. The blockade has created a humanitarian crisis for the 120,000 isolated Armenians whose gas was cut off in the middle of winter and prevented from free movement which would have also allowed access to medical care. If for Artsakh/Nagorno-Karabakh the Azerbaijani strategy is to push the local population through isolation to leave those territories that Azerbaijan has been claiming for years as its own, for the Armenian sovereign territory to be targeted is the Southern Armenian region of Syunik. This region, which borders Iran to the south, is at the center of the dispute between Armenia and Azerbaijan, as it would serve Baku for the construction of the so-called Zangezur Corridor, a passage that would connect Turkey with Azerbaijan and the Caspian. If up to now only Iran had exposed itself to drawing a red line on the violation of Armenian borders, with the CSTO intervention the situation could change and Baku could give up before the bloc of Eurasian states.
*Director of SpecialEurasia.