Armenian-Azerbaijani clashes: evaluating the Ukraine factor

It may not be a coincidence that attacks took place when Russian appeared unable to help Major clashes erupted between Armenia and Azerbaijan along their shared border late Monday night. Both countries accused the other of instigating the fighting.

Shortly after it began, Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan spoke by phone with Russian President Vladimir Putin, reached out to the United Nations and called for a response from the international community. He said that since Baku had attacked territory that was internationally recognized as part of Armenia, Yerevan would invoke the Russian-led Collective Security Treaty Organization’s Article 4 collective security clause.

Under the article, CSTO member states need to come to the aid of another member that’s under attack. In January, Kazakh President Kassym-Jomart Tokayev invoked the same clause, calling on Russia for military assistance after antigovernment riots broke out in the country.

In the Armenian-Azerbaijani clashes, Moscow hasn’t sent military support but did say on Tuesday that it had brokered a cease-fire. The U.S. and EU, meanwhile, have called for deescalation, while Turkey, Azerbaijan’s ally, said it supported Baku.

The clashes are the latest bout of fighting in a longrunning conflict between Azerbaijan and Armenia. In 2020, they fought the Second Nagorno-Karabakh War, which ended in a Moscow-mediated cease-fire and the deployment of Russian peacekeepers. Since then, there have been sporadic border clashes, sparking fears of a larger confrontation.

For the past six month – soon after the beginning of the war in Ukraine – hostilities have been escalating in and around the breakaway region of Nagorno-Karabakh, which is populated mainly by ethnic Armenians.

The South Caucasus is an important buffer zone for Russia and a place where Russian, Turkish, U.S. and Iranian interests collide, so there’s always potential that a conflict here could draw in regional powers or destabilize Russia’s southern flank.

The roots of the conflict stretch back decades. In 1988, ethnic Armenians living in an Armenian-majority enclave in the Azerbaijan Soviet Socialist Republic called NagornoKarabakh Autonomous Oblast (NKAO) demanded that the territory be transferred to Armenia.

But three years later, the Soviet Union collapsed before the issue could be resolved. In 1994, the First Nagorno-Karabakh War ended in a Russian-sponsored cease-fire, with Armenian forces in control of NKAO, which took possession of seven Azerbaijani territories to the west, south and east and declared independence.

The status quo held until the Second Nagorno-Karabakh War began in September 2020, ending with another ceasefire negotiated by Moscow.

Azerbaijan took control of part of Nagorno-Karabakh, including the towns of Shusha and Hadrut and the seven adjacent territories it had lost to Armenia in 1994. Armenian troops withdrew, but Russian peacekeepers deployed to the region to patrol the parts of the former NKAO that remained in the hands of ethnic Armenians.

In the early days of the war in Ukraine, officials in Yerevan and in Nagorno-Karabakh’s de facto capital of Stepanakert feared that Azerbaijan would take advantage of Russia’s and the West’s preoccupation to recapture more land in the breakaway region.

Azerbaijan sees the whole territory as its own and has no interest in negotiating Nagorno-Karabakh’s status or that of the ethnic-Armenians living there.

The clashes that broke out in March resulted in Azerbaijan gaining control of Farukh, a village that lies in an Armenianpopulated district of Nagorno-Karabakh. At the time, Russian forces successfully pressed both sides to end the fighting.

The territory’s own troops left the area under Russian monitoring toward the end of the month, but Azerbaijani forces remained. Baku refused calls from the U.S., EU, France and Russia to pull its forces back to their previous positions. This led to the deployment of Russian peacekeepers to Farukh with the goal of preventing any further advances by Azerbaijani forces.

The timing of this week’s clashes is notable. As it became clear the war in Ukraine wasn’t ending any time soon, Azerbaijan found itself in a unique position. Not only could it provide Europe a much-needed alternative source of natural gas, but it, along with Turkey, its main ally in the region, also saw an opportunity to enhance its position as potential mediator between Russia and the West.

While European and American delegations visited Azerbaijan for energy talks, Baku also maintained cordial relations with Moscow. It didn’t condemn the Russian invasion outright, but neither has it recognized the independence of the separatist regions of Donetsk and Luhansk. It instead continued to work with Turkey and pursued different opportunities in line with its national interests.

The current flareup began just a day after reports indicated that a counteroffensive launched by Ukrainian forces in eastern Ukraine was successful.

Though it’s difficult to gauge the accuracy of these reports, given that most of the information about the operation is coming out of Kyiv, it seems clear that the morale of the Russian military has suffered greatly in recent months and may have reached its limit.

If the Russian military has indeed suffered the kind of losses reported by most Western media, it needs to consider a new strategy.

One option is to engage in another region where it has the upper hand. In Nagorno-Karabakh, Russia mainly plays the role of peacemaker rather than aggressor, seeing this as the best way to maintain its influence in the region.

However, Moscow reportedly no longer has a full contingent of peacekeepers deployed to Nagorno-Karabakh, so it’s unclear whether it would be able to keep the peace there anyway.

This may be why Azerbaijan saw an opportunity to attack Armenia at a time when Russia appeared unable to help. We’ll know if this is the case in the next few days. If fighting doesn’t stop and if Russia doesn’t come to Armenia’s aid, Moscow’s influence in the South Caucasus could diminish.

Failing to intervene during a crisis would further weaken Russia’s position, while presenting opportunities – and headaches – for the West.