Where's Nagorno-Karabakh? Azerbaijan Eyes Russia Ally in 'Special Operation'

Azerbaijan has launched an offensive in the breakaway Nagorno-Karabakh territory, spurring calls for Russia, the EU and the U.S. to intervene and adding to instability diplomatically in a volatile Eurasian region.

Baku's defense ministry said on Tuesday that it had launched "anti-terrorist measures" in the breakaway mountainous region. It followed a military build-up by Azerbaijan near the front lines in recent weeks.

But tensions between the South Caucasus countries have been high for a long time regarding the breakaway enclave. Nagorno-Karabakh, known to Armenians as Artsakh, is recognised internationally as part of Azerbaijan and is home to a majority ethnic Armenian population. The neighbors have gone to war twice over Nagorno-Karabakh since the break-up of the USSR—first in the early 1990s and again in 2020.

More than 7,000 troops were killed in the most-recent conflict after which Azerbaijan regained control of about one-third of the Soviet-era Nagorno-Karabakh Autonomous Oblast and most of seven adjacent territories.

There has been concern about a flare-up of hostilities in recent months, after Azerbaijan mounted a blockade in December of the only route into the enclave from Armenia, known as the Lachin Corridor, sparking fears of a humanitarian crisis. This complicated peace talks between Baku and Yerevan, the capital of Armenia, in which the security of ethnic Karabakh Armenians is the greatest sticking point.

Karabakh's human-rights ombudsman Artak Beglaryan, an ex-ombudsman of Nagorno-Karabakh, posted on X (formerly known as Twitter) that Baku had started "the bloody phase of the genocide of the Artsakh people after a long phase of starvation."

"Are these your guarantees of rights and security, Russia, US, EU!!!" Beglaryan added.

Olesya Vartanyan, the International Crisis Group's senior analyst for the South Caucasus region, said it was critical that world leaders, including the foreign ministers of Azerbaijan and Armenia at the UN General Assembly, as well as the three key international mediators—the U.S., EU and Russia—"do their utmost to halt the fighting and convince Baku its aims can best be met through talks."

Despite Russia's role in brokering a 2020 ceasefire, Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova said on Tuesday that Moscow had been given only minutes' notice of Baku's latest actions and urged the parties to the conflict to respect a peace accord.

Marut Vanyan, a journalist based in Karabakh, posted footage on X in which explosions can be heard and smoke rising near the hospital in the main city, Stepanakert, on Tuesday. "Non-stop artillery shells are being heard," he wrote.

Air-raid sirens and mortar fire were heard, and 11 Azerbaijani police and civilians were reported killed in a mine blast and another incident, according to the BBC. The news outlet said that the situation on the country's borders was relatively stable.

Baku had accused Armenian sabotage groups for two separate explosions that killed four military personnel and two civilians in areas under the control of Russian peacekeepers.

While Baku insisted that civilian population and infrastructure were not targets, Armenia said it had no troops there and accused Azerbaijan of violating a ceasefire.

"Baku appears to be trying to establish full control over Nagorno-Karabakh, where Russian peacekeepers have been deployed as part of a ceasefire that ended the 2020 war," said the ICG's Vartanyan. "The latest fighting might lead ethnic Armenians living in the region to flee."

In a report produced in January 2023, the ICG said fighting in 2022 did not spill over into war due to diplomacy.

However, the think tank warned that month "the risk of renewed clashes remains high" and that a war between "would have tremendous human costs," as well as "undermine the EU, Russian and U.S. goal of de-escalating regional tensions."

Zaur Shiriyev, ICG South Caucasus analyst, said that Baku felt that its grievances about the 30-year-old conflict with Armenia were not being adequately addressed by former peace processes. It had made similar complaints with the latest rounds of talks.

"It redrew the map in the 2020 war and now seeks a peace settlement with Armenia but on its own terms," he told Newsweek.

Shiriyev said that Baku has not shown that it would change its stance regardless of pressure from external actors such as its NATO-member ally Turkey.

"It's a misconception that Ankara can dictate or would seek to change Baku's decisions, especially given that these two allies have consistently been aligned on key issues," Shiriyev said, "despite facilitating talks, neither do Washington, the European Union, nor Moscow seem to hold much sway."

Yerevan and Baku both have close ties to Russia, with Armenia a member of the Moscow-led Collective Security Treaty Organization (CSTO). Azerbaijan was a former member, and had been recently testing its strength on the battlefield as well as at the negotiating table, according to the ICG.

Behind Russia, U.S. has the biggest Armenian diaspora. Russians expressed their concern at joint military exercises between U.S. and Armenia known as "Eagle Partner 2023", suggesting that Yerevan was looking to pivot away from Moscow's influence.