Armenia and Azerbaijan agree to ‘not use force’

Armenia and Azerbaijan pledged on Monday “not to use force” to find a solution to their conflict around the Nagorny-Karabakh enclave, following a summit with Vladimir Putin, intended to reassert Moscow’s influence in the Caucasus.

This summit was organized in Sochi, in the south-west of Russia, a month after border clashes which left 286 dead. This is the heaviest toll since a war in 2020 for control of Nagorny-Karabakh, a region disputed between these two former Soviet republics since the 1990s.

“A useful meeting”, says Putin

In a joint declaration adopted at the end of the summit, Baku and Yerevan pledged “not to use force”, as well as “to settle all disputes solely on the basis of recognition of mutual sovereignty and territorial integration”.

They also underlined “the importance of active preparations for the conclusion of a peace agreement between Azerbaijan and Armenia in order to ensure a lasting and long-term peace in the region”.

“In our common opinion, it was a very useful meeting which created a very good atmosphere for possible future agreements,” said Russian President Vladimir Putin, after the summit with his Azerbaijani counterpart Ilham. Aliyev and Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinian.

“For its part, Russia will do everything to find a final and comprehensive settlement” of the conflict in Nagorny-Karabakh, he assured, adding: “It is in everyone’s interest to normalize relations”.

Constrained for eight months by its offensive against Ukraine, which has caused embarrassment to Moscow’s traditional partners, Putin wanted with this summit that Russia regain its traditional role of arbiter in this unstable region, where the West is carrying out its own mediation efforts.

« Normalisation »

The Russian President initially spoke one-on-one with Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinian, who stressed that his priorities were the Azerbaijani withdrawal from the areas of Nagorny-Karabakh in which the soldiers of the forces of Russian peace and the release of prisoners of war. The Russian president then received his Azerbaijani counterpart Ilham Aliyev who thanked him for having given “momentum to the normalization process”.

The fall 2020 war between Armenia and Azerbaijan left more than 6,500 dead on both sides and ended in an Armenian military rout and a Moscow-sponsored peace deal. Sporadic clashes continued to break out, however, despite the presence of Russian soldiers, whether in Nagorny-Karabakh or on the recognized border between the two countries, as in September.

These Russian-sponsored talks come at a time when Western capitals have taken a more active part in mediating the conflict between Armenia and Azerbaijan. European Council President Charles Michel and French President Emmanuel Macron organized negotiations between Pashinian and Aliyev in Brussels in August.

EU-Russia estrangement

The EU and Russia, which takes a dim view of these initiatives in a region it considers its backyard, have exchanged sharp criticisms of their respective mediation efforts. Macron had notably accused Russia of wanting to “destabilize” the peace process, Vladimir Putin denouncing “unacceptable” remarks.

“Our European partners are conducting their policy in a way aimed at excluding Russia from all negotiation formats,” Putin accused Monday at a press conference in Sochi, while judging that it was “impossible”.

Ahead of the talks, Pashinyan announced on Saturday that he was ready to extend the presence of the 2,000 Russian peacekeepers for up to 20 years. The existing agreement signed in 2020 provides for their deployment for five years, with possible automatic extension.

The Azerbaijani president, on the strength of his military victory in 2020, has sworn to repopulate Karabakh with Azerbaijanis, while this region mainly inhabited by Armenians has escaped the control of Baku since a first war – which had killed nearly 30,000 people – in the 1990s, at the time of the break-up of the USSR. Turkey, an ally of Baku, has also made mediation efforts, its president Recep Tayyip Erdogan having recently met Aliyev and Pashinian in Prague.