At a time when Vladimir Putin wishes pals in his neighbourhood, he seems as an alternative to be dropping them within the South Caucasus. After two centuries of Russian involvement within the area, balancing the ancient contention and every now and then appearing as mediator between Armenia and Azerbaijan, there may be rising hypothesis that the 2 nations are making ready a significant reset in family members.
When Armenia’s high minister, Nikol Pashinyan, met the Azerbaijani president, Ilham Aliyev, in Abu Dhabi on July 10, they reportedly got here with reference to agreeing a peace treaty. The large query is whether or not, if those two nations can iron out distrust and violence born of the territorial struggle, there’ll nonetheless be a task for Russia within the South Caucasus.
To know the advanced geopolitics of the area, you wish to have to return to the early nineteenth century, when Azerbaijan and what’s now the Republic of Armenia) had been ceded to Russia following the Russo-Persian wars. After the Russian revolution, the 2 nations accomplished transient independence between 1918 and 1920 (despite the fact that now not of their provide borders) prior to being integrated into the Soviet Union.
Throughout the Soviet technology, the union republics of Armenia and Azerbaijan each felt that Moscow favoured the opposite. Armenia used to be unsatisfied that the Soviet management allotted Nagorno-Karabakh, a majority-Armenian exclave surrounded through Azeri-populated lands, to Azerbaijan. Azerbaijan used to be upset that its borders denied it a land connection to its inhabitants in Nakhchivan, an exclave of ethnic Azeris that would simplest be reached by means of southern Armenia.
Within the ultimate years of the Soviet Union, as Armenian nationalism started to say itself all the way through the duration of perestroika (restructuring), Nagorno-Karabakh’s legislature handed a legislation mentioning its goal to sign up for Armenia. This transfer in the end resulted in armed clashes within the area.
The primary Karabakh conflict, which raged between 1988 and 1994, started prior to the Soviet break-up however persisted after the 2 nations won their independence. In 1994, after greater than 30,000 casualties, Russia brokered a ceasefire. The agreement favoured Armenia, leaving it in keep an eye on of Nagorno-Karabakh and some other six surrounding Azerbaijani districts.
Issues started to switch when Putin took energy in Russia in 2000. Russia’s family members with Azerbaijan progressed, in part because of his non-public rapport with the then-president, Heydar Aliyev, and his son Ilham, who would be triumphant him in 2003. After 9/11, when preventing world terrorism was an international precedence, Azerbaijan put measures in position to stop switch of combatants and guns via its territory to the conflict in Chechnya, which additional progressed family members with Moscow.
At this level, Azerbaijan used to be pursuing what it described as a “multi-vector” overseas coverage. This allowed it to expand ties with a number of nations, together with the USA, Russia and others to whom it offered oil. Whilst ultimate within the Commonwealth of Impartial States, it didn’t signal as much as the Russia-led Collective Safety Treaty Organisation (CSTO).
Nagorno-Karabakh
Armenia, against this, used to be an absolutely taking part member of the CSTO. Having signed an Everlasting Friendship Treaty with Russia in 1997, this used to be a transparent strategic selection for Armenia – in part motivated through ancient ties.
Russia had historically been observed as a defender of Christianity within the days of the Ottomon empire. Many of us had fled massacres in Western Armenia (modern day Turkey) in 1915 to return below the safety of the Russian Tsar. However Armenia additionally noticed Moscow as an important safety guarantor in opposition to an increasingly more militarised Azerbaijan, which used to be made up our minds to get well keep an eye on of Nagorno-Karabakh and different spaces occupied through Armenia.
Map appearing the idea that of the ‘Zanzegur corridor’, which would narrow throughout southernmost Armenia to attach Azerbaijan with Nakhchivan.
Mapeh/Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-NC
Certainly, it used to be Nagorno-Karabakh which in point of fact soured family members between Armenia and Moscow. In 2020, when – aided through Turkey – Azerbaijan introduced its offensive to retake the territory, Russia failed to return to the help of its CSTO best friend. This used to be anticipated, for the reason that family members had begun to become worse in 2018 when Pashinyan got here to energy in Armenia.
In hindsight, maximum commentators consider Russia had transform bored with Armenia’s intransigence over the plan, agreed in Madrid in 2007, for it to cede again the six districts surrounding Nagorno-Karabakh to Azerbaijan.
As a substitute, Moscow brokered a ceasefire settlement and deployed 2,000 peacekeepers alongside the Lachin hall, a strip of land connecting Armenia and Nagorno-Karabakh. However those troops additionally didn’t intrude when an Azeri offensive retook the entire of Nagorno-Karabakh in September 2023, forcing the inhabitants of about 100,000 ethnic Armenians to escape.
Issues bitter between Moscow and Baku
Family members between Russia and Azerbaijan, in the meantime, have long gone downhill unexpectedly. In December 2024, an Azeri civilian airliner used to be shot down in Russian airspace. Putin apologised, however Azerbaijan insisted on Moscow disclosing the result of the investigation and paying repayment to the sufferers.
Azerbaijan additionally denounced Russia in state media and Russia Space, the state-funded Russian cultural company in Baku, used to be closed down, with a number of cultural occasions cancelled. Safety companies started to implement documentation tests on all Russian nationals within the nation.
On the identical time, Azerbaijan and Armenia had been already speaking about concluding a peace treaty independently, with out intermediaries. All this has caused hypothesis of a significant lack of affect within the area for Moscow.
Then again, an entire shutout of Russia within the South Caucasus is not likely. Each Armenia and Azerbaijan rely on remittance source of revenue from their nationals in Russia. Each nations additionally stay shut buying and selling companions with Russia. Whilst Armenia suspended its club in CSTO, it has now not give up the organisation altogether.
A long way much more likely is that the 2 nations, conscious of the rising affect of Turkey within the area and the shifts created through Donald Trump in international affairs, are manoeuvring whilst weighing their choices. Geography issues, as Georgia’s instance demonstrates – efforts to chop ties with Russia through its former president, Mikheil Saakashvili, had been in part reversed through the present govt, which increasingly more leans against Moscow.
Within the instances of Armenia and Azerbaijan, financial ties, shipping hyperlinks and human connections nonetheless favour a courting with Russia. So, a brief breakdown in political family members will also be mended – if all 3 leaders show sufficient statesmanship to sail throughout the afflicted waters.
