A Brief and updated overview of the Nagorno-Karabakh Dynamics
Charbel Bou Maroun
President of Mechriq Center for Research and Studies, Beirut, Lebanon
The conflict over Nagorno-Karabakh (Artsakh) the longest-running conflict in the post-soviet Caucasus region extends far beyond Armenia and neighboring Azerbaijan. The causes include ethno-religious geopolitical and energy-strategic factors.
Armenia, a land of mountains in the heart of the Caucasus and the Nagorno-Karabakh region that once belonged to it, is the world’s first Nation to declare Christianity as its official religion in the year 301. It borders several major Powers, which put it directly in the center of a quagmire situation similar to the Great Game (a rivalry between the 19th-century British and Russian empires over influence in Central Asia)
In 1923, Joseph Stalin wanted to secure the support of Turkish-speaking Muslims in the region and ceded the Nagorno-Karabakh region to Azerbaijan.
For decades, conflicts have arisen between Azerbaijan and Armenia over the Nagorno-Karabakh region.
In the spring of 2018, the velvet Armenian Revolution (Merzhir Serzhin) started. A new era was dawning in Armenia, The Prime Minister journalist and former political prisoner Nikol Pashinyan began his long march through the country. He wanted to overthrow the corrupt regime, a true challenge to Moscow’s preferred model of a weak client state and leaders who depend on Russia for their very survival.
Two years later, on September 27th, 2020, Baku launched a new large-scale military offensive, taking advantage of many world events, namely the COVID-19 pandemic, and the end of Trump’s term in office in the US.
The Azeri bombardment continued for 44 days. It was an unequal battle through which Turkish officers led the Azerbaijani troops with the reinforcements of around 2,000 Syrian Jihadi mercenaries.
Vladimir Putin stepped in to end the conflict, not as a mediator, but as a power broker and strategist to simply let Aliev and his Turkish friends win.
This intervention came as part of a broader Geostrategic power play.
This power play shored up the position of Putin as the policeman of the caucuses, as he dictated a ceasefire agreement between Armenia and Azerbaijan and deployed 2,000 Russian soldiers to protect the Armenians and the mostly destroyed Nagorno-Karabakh.
In return for this favor, Aliev used the Diplomacy of Oil and Gas and Caviar and agreed to seed its territory as a transit route for Russian oil exports to circumvent international sanctions days before the Russian invasion of Ukraine in 2022 started.
The only access to Nagorno-Karabakh via a mountain road was blocked by Azerbaijan, preventing aid and medicine from reaching the region. This last land connection from Armenia to Nagorno-Karabakh was actually supposed to be secured by Russia. However, Russia did nothing. Azerbaijan, supported by Turkey and rich in oil, blocked the Lachin corridor and attacked the Armenians of Nagorno-Karabakh again in September 2023. Azerbaijan won the war for the region, with the help of Turkey and Israel, a blind eye from the Biden Administration and the EU, and not least due to Russia’s passivity.
The largest Exodus and Ethnic Cleansing in the modern era took place under the eyes and ears of the International Community. Azerbaijan uprooted and expelled more than 120,000 Armenians from their fatherland, Nagorno-Karabakh, in the fall of 2023.
Nevertheless, Aliev’s ambition will not stop, as his next step will be Zangezur.
If implemented, the Zangezur corridor, a transport corridor, would give Azerbaijan unimpeded access to the Nakhchivan Autonomous Republic without an Armenian checkpoint, having in mind that the Zangezur corridor falls in Armenian lands and is under Armenia’s sovereignty. In a broad sense, it is the geopolitical corridor connecting Turkey to the rest of the Turkic world that Turkey and Azerbaijan are pursuing.
The Nagorno-Karabakh Republic was dissolved on January 1st, 2024, and a peace deal was reached between Armenia and Azerbaijan in March 2025, but not yet ratified.
The unanswered questions remain, whether this peace deal will be signed and Armenians will return to Artsakh. Trump is back in office in the US. Revolutionary Islam (Turkey and Iran) is losing its grip in the Middle East. Will this conflict shift to Northern Iran, where Azeris comprise most of the population?
Even if it does, would Iran be left alone to confront such a detrimental conflict, or its international allies, including Russia and China, will intervene to bail out the theocratic regime and their executive hand in the Middle East?
