Nagorno-Karabakh: Is Europe doing enough to help?
A new refugee crisis is unfolding on Europe’s doorstep, said Walter Mayr in Der Spiegel (Germany). Tens of thousands of desperate people are fleeing NagornoKarabakh, an ethnic-Armenian enclave surrounded by Azerbaijan. After decades of simmering conflict with neighboring Armenia for control of the region, Azerbaijan suddenly routed Karabakh Armenian forces last week in a “blitzkrieg” of indiscriminate shelling that killed some 200 people. Now that he has declared victory, Azerbaijan President Ilham Aliyev says he will “reintegrate” Nagorno-Karabakh into Azerbaijan and treat its 120,000 Armenians as “equal citizens.” But the Karabakh Armenians, with no reason to trust him, are fleeing en masse to Armenia. In the rush to fill gas tanks, a fuel depot exploded, and dozens were killed. The refugees are running for their lives, said Gegham Baghdasaryan in Aravot (Armenia). They know the Azeris hate them and will stamp out any Armenian identity in whatever “hostage population” remains behind.
Blame Russia for this humanitarian crisis, said Agassi Yenokyan, also in Aravot. Fighting over Nagorno-Karabakh, a mountain region the size of Rhode Island, began after the fall of the Soviet Union. While Muslim Azerbaijan has close ties to Turkey— which has its own fraught history of genocide against Armenians in World War I—Russia has historically backed Orthodox Christian Armenia. When Azerbaijan seized control of much of Nagorno-Karabakh in 2020, Moscow sent 2,000 peacekeepers to protect the Karabakh Armenians. Those Russian troops, though, “didn’t move an inch” to stop Baku’s shelling last week.
That’s because President Vladimir Putin, hit by Western sanctions over his war in Ukraine, needs the support of NATO member Turkey. Moscow effectively sold out Armenia “in order to buy Turkey.”
Thanks to that Russian betrayal, “Armenia is now slowly turning toward the European Union,” said Trouw (Netherlands) in an editorial. Armenia “threw in the towel” so quickly last week because Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan knew his forces could not rescue the Karabakh Armenians without Russian backing. Furious that Pashinyan abandoned the enclave, some Armenians are demanding his resignation. But Armenia is hoping that Brussels might “use its influence to protect the Karabakh Armenians.”
That’s a risky bet, said Philippe Jacqué and Philippe Ricard in
Le Monde (France). Although Azerbaijan’s ruthless quest to control Nagorno-Karabakh has killed 30,000 people since the 1990s, the EU has never taken a united stand against Baku. Europeans are still too divided by echoes of old alliances: France, for example, is “sensitive to the positions of the Armenian diaspora,” while Hungary remains close to Azerbaijan. Crucially, the EU also needs Azeri oil, since the bloc has quit buying from Russia. That’s why in a recent joint declaration on the Nagorno-Karabakh crisis, the 27 EU countries struck a mealymouthed tone, calling for a humanitarian corridor for aid but failing to condemn Azerbaijan’s aggression. Diplomats say if the exodus starts to look like “ethnic cleansing,” the EU will act—but by then it will be too late.