MESOP MIDEAST WATCH: Top of the Agenda – Dozens Killed in Worst Flare-Up of Armenia-Azerbaijan Dispute Since 2020 War
13.9.22 – MESOP – Clashes between Armenia and Azerbaijan near the disputed region of Nagorno-Karabakh prompted international appeals for restraint (Reuters). Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan said Azerbaijani forces killed forty-nine soldiers (NYT), while both countries accused each other of attacking first.

Nagorno-Karabakh is internationally recognized as part of Azerbaijan but is controlled by ethnic Armenian forces who are backed by Armenia. Russia, which is an ally of Armenia, said it is working to renew a cease-fire (AP) that it helped broker in 2020 to end a war that killed more than six thousand people and led to significant territorial gains by Azerbaijan. French President Emmanuel Macron’s office said he will bring up the clashes at the UN Security Council.
Analysis
“The escalation between the two former Soviet states in the South Caucasus has heightened fears that Russia could find itself entangled in a second war in addition to its invasion of Ukraine. Some military analysts suggested that Azerbaijan may have been emboldened by Russia’s recent setbacks in northeastern Ukraine,” the New York Times’ Ivan Nechepurenko writes.

 

“The diminished Russian role [in the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict since Russia invaded Ukraine] has caused instability, but it also gives Armenia and Azerbaijan an opportunity, if they wish to seize it, to work toward a definitive and historic peace settlement,” the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace’s Thomas de Waal writes for Foreign Affairs. 

 

CFR’s Global Conflict Tracker traces the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict.