Armenia vs Azerbaijan: Nagorno-Karabakh Crisis

Armenia and Azerbaijan agreed to a Russia-brokered cease-fire in Nagorno-Karabakh starting Saturday, but immediately accused each other of derailing the deal intended to end the worst outbreak of hostilities in the separatist region in more than a quarter-century.

The two sides traded blame for breaking the truce that took effect at noon (0800 GMT) with new attacks, and Azerbaijan’s top diplomat said the truce never entered force.

The cease-fire announcement came overnight after 10 hours of talks in Moscow sponsored by Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov. The deal stipulated that the cease-fire should pave the way for talks on settling the conflict.

If the truce holds, it would mark a major diplomatic coup for Russia, which has a security pact with Armenia but also cultivated warm ties with Azerbaijan. But the agreement was immediately challenged by mutual claims of violations.



Minutes after the truce took force, the Armenian military accused Azerbaijan of shelling the area near the town of Kapan in southeastern Armenia, killing one civilian. Azerbaijan’s Defense Ministry rejected the Armenian accusations as a “provocation.”

The Azerbaijani military, in turn, accused Armenia of striking the Terter and Agdam regions of Azerbaijan with missiles and then attempting to launch offensives in the Agdere-Terter and the Fizuli-Jabrail areas. Azerbaijan’s Foreign Minister Jeyhun Bayramov charged that “conditions for implementing the humanitarian cease-fire are currently missing” amid the continuing Armenian shelling.

Armenia’s Defense Ministry denied any truce violations by the Armenian forces and said in the evening that the truce was “largely holding” despite Azerbaijani “provocations,” to which the Armenian troops responded in kind.

The latest outburst of fighting between Azerbaijani and Armenian forces began Sept. 27 and left hundreds of people dead in the biggest escalation of the decades-old conflict over Nagorno-Karabakh since a separatist war there ended in 1994. The region lies in Azerbaijan but has been under control of ethnic Armenian forces backed by Armenia.

Since the start of the latest fighting, Armenia said it was open to a cease-fire, while Azerbaijan insisted that it should be conditional on the Armenian forces’ withdrawal from Nagorno-Karabakh, arguing that the failure of international efforts to negotiate a political settlement left it no other choice but to resort to force.



The foreign ministers of Armenia and Azerbaijan signed the truce in Moscow after Russian President Vladimir Putin had brokered it in a series of calls with President Ilham Aliyev of Azerbaijan and Armenia’s Prime Minister Nikol Pashinian.

Russia has co-sponsored peace talks on Nagorno-Karabakh together with the United States and France as co-chairs of the so-called Minsk Group, which is working under the auspices of the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe. They haven’t produced any deal, leaving Azerbaijan increasingly exasperated.

Speaking in an address to the nation Friday hours before the cease-fire deal was reached, Aliyev insisted on Azerbaijan’s right to reclaim its territory by force after nearly three decades of international talks that “haven’t yielded an inch of progress.”

His aide, Hikmat Hajiyev, said that the Minsk Group must offer a concrete plan for the Armenian forces’ withdrawal from Nagorno-Karabakh. “There will be no peace in the South Caucasus until the Armenian troops pull out from the occupied territories,” he said.





Fighting with heavy artillery, warplanes and drones has engulfed Nagorno-Karabakh, with both sides accusing each other of targeting residential areas and civilian infrastructure.

According to the Nagorno-Karabakh military, 404 of its servicemen have been killed since Sept. 27. Azerbaijan hasn’t provided details on its military losses. Scores of civilians on both sides also have been killed.

The current escalation marked the first time that Azerbaijan’s ally Turkey took a high profile in the conflict, offering strong political support. Over the past few years, Turkey provided Azerbaijan with state-of-the-art weapons, including drones and rocket systems that helped the Azerbaijani military outgun the Nagorno-Karabakh separatist forces in the latest fighting.

Armenian officials say Turkey is involved in the conflict and is sending Syrian mercenaries to fight on Azerbaijan’s side. Turkey has denied deploying combatants to the region, but a Syrian war monitor and three Syria-based opposition activists have confirmed that Turkey has sent hundreds of Syrian opposition fighters to fight in Nagorno-Karabakh.

Turkey’s involvement in the conflict raised painful memories in Armenia, where an estimated 1.5 million died in massacres, deportations and forced marches that began in 1915. The event is widely viewed by historians as genocide, but Turkey denies that.

Turkey’s highly visible role in the confrontation worried Russia, which has a military base in Armenia. Russia and Armenia are linked by a security treaty obliging Moscow to offer support to its ally if it comes under aggression.

But at the same time, Russia has sought to maintain strong economic and political ties with oil-rich Azerbaijan and ward off Turkey’s attempt to increase its influence in the South Caucasus without ruining its delicate relations with Ankara.

Putin and Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan have negotiated a series of deals to coordinate their conflicting interests in Syria and Libya and expanded their economic ties. Last year, NATO member Turkey took the delivery of the Russian S-400 air defense missiles, a move that angered Washington.

A lasting cease-fire in Nagorno-Karabakh would allow the Kremlin to stem Turkey’s bid to expand its clout in Russia’s backyard without ruining its strategic relationship with Ankara.

The Turkish Foreign Ministry said the deal was “an important first step, but cannot replace a lasting solution.”

“Since the beginning, Turkey has always underlined that it would only support those solutions which were acceptable to Azerbaijan,” it said.

While Turkey has aspired to join the Minsk Group talks as a co-chair, the statement issued by Armenia and Azerbaijan contained their pledge to maintain the current format of the peace talks.

Speaking in televised remarks after the talks, Armenian Foreign Minister Zohrab Mnatsakanyan emphasized that “no other country, in particular Turkey, can play any role.”

The French Foreign Ministry hailed the truce announcement, adding that “now it must be put into practice and strictly respected to create conditions for a permanent end to hostilities between the two countries.”

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The latest war over Nagorno Karabakh lasted a single day, ending on Sept. 20. It is the third war over the region disputed between Azerbaijan and Armenia in the last three and a half decades.

But this time, it seems there was really only one party to the conflict. Armenia stayed out, leaving it to the Armenians of Nagorno Karabakh to surrender.

A hundred thousand people have fled to Armenia, roughly 80 percent of the Karabakh population. What’s more, Armenia’s most powerful allies, Iran and Russia, appear to be distracted and marginally engaged.

Advantage Washington, then, if we view these matters in the context of strategic competition.

Turkey gets this. The country’s president, Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, has backed Azerbaijan to expand Ankara’s influence in the South Caucasus. America needs to get its oar in the water. There’s an unprecedented opportunity to moderate Turkish ambition and push back Iran and Russia from a region important for both energy and security.

At the risk of sounding obvious, Russia and Iran deserve our particular attention.

Start with Iran, a longstanding foe of Azerbaijan and close ally of Armenia, which shares parts of its northern border with each. Its Azeri minority comprises as much as 25 percent of Iran’s population, and shares a border with Armenia. Azerbaijan’s desire for control over a route to its own exclave south of Armenia would potentially come at Iran’s expense.

The South Caucasus is important to Iran for two reasons. First, it wants a stable land bridge northward to its ally Russia. Second, Tehran wants access to Europe without having to pay high transit fees to Turkey. That’s why Tehran has been pushing over the last few years for a “Persian Gulf-Black Sea” corridor. Iran is already shipping goods through the South Caucasus into Bulgaria and Greece, and thereby into the lucrative EU market.

Lest one think that this is all about free trade, from Tbilisi to Baku, Iran continues to extend its track record of assassinating dissidents and unfriendly lawmakers.

Then there’s Russia. Nagorno Karabakh is a majority-Armenian inhabited region. In all three wars, starting in 1998, Moscow has stepped up as mediator and broker of ceasefires. Russia’s appetite for influence has not disappeared. Its hand, however, is weaker today, even if its interests remain clear.

The pro-Russian opposition tried to stage a coup last week against Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan because he refused to fight Azerbaijan. But there’s more. Putin feels threatened by democratically elected leaders in the region. That is what Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine and Maia Sandu of Moldova represent. Pashinyan was also democratically re-elected in 2021. Armenians voted for peace, not war, and Yerevan’s current government leans west, not east.

It is time for the West to step in. There are already encouraging signs. For the first time, both the U.S. and the EU have held peace talks between Armenia and Azerbaijan over the last few months. In Arlington, Va., the leaders of the two countries were hosted by Secretary of State Antony Blinken. Last week, the U.S. held a military peacekeeping exercise with Armenia, to the chagrin of Russia and Iran. The USAID Director Samantha Power landed Monday morning in Armenia, as thousands of Nagorno Karabakh Armenians were fleeing there.

It is important to address humanitarian concerns, but there’s a larger strategic opportunity for the U.S. To build on these early steps, the U.S. should consider these three things. First, take over negotiations from Russia. Armenia wants to rid itself of Russian influence. Azerbaijan, an ally of Israel and Turkey, is malleable and open-minded.

Second, the U.S. should actively support a larger mandate for EU peacekeepers in the South Caucasus. The EU last year launched a mission to the South Caucasus, but its mandate is so limited that it already failed to prevent the one-day war. With political and material support from the U.S., Brussels could beef up the mission to establish Western foothold in the region.

Third, the U.S. should consider establishing a cooperation format for the South Caucasus that excludes Russia and Iran. This could include one or both countries. By taking leadership of a format that includes the three South Caucasus nations, Turkey, and the EU, the U.S. can afford Armenia and Azerbaijan a chance to develop their relations with the West, while distancing themselves further from Russia and Iran.

Sometimes, regional conflicts have global importance. The conflict between Azerbaijan and Armenia is one such case. If we want to push back against Iranian and Russian influence, opportunity is knocking at the door.

Iulia Sabina-Joja teaches at Georgetown University and George Washington University, runs the Middle East Institute’s Black Sea program in Washington, D.C., and is co-host of the AEI podcast “Eastern Front.”