Wreckage of an Armenian Yak-40 passenger aircraft that was flying from Stepanakert to Yerevan and hit by fire from an Azerbaijani SU-25 on 9 May 1992, forcing it to crash close to the Armenia-Azerbaijan border near Sisian. Among the 30 or so passengers on board were wounded soldiers. There were no fatalities © Onnik James Krikorian 1994
Yesterday, Artur Tovmasyan, defacto Speaker of Karabakh’s National Assembly, issued a statement calling on the Russian, French and U.S. Presidents to force Azerbaijan to allow an airlift from Armenia to the isolated region’s airport situated outside of Stepanakert. The remarks came after over three weeks of what are claimed to be environmental protests effectively blocking access to and from Karabakh on the Lachin Corridor.
In words echoing those of defacto State Minister Ruben Vardanyan, Tovmasyan said that this was necessary to transport vital humanitarian assistance to the besieged ethnic Armenian residents of what remains of the former Soviet-era Nagorno Karabakh Autonomous Oblast (NKAO). That, however, is unlikely to happen. Indeed, in a news item published today, Security and Policy Consultant Sossi Tatikyan explained why.
“Unfortunately, this is not possible without the agreement of Azerbaijan or the resolution of the UN Security Council,” she told Radio Free Europe / Radio Liberty (RFE/RL). “It was not even possible to adopt a statement of the UN Security Council, as we saw a few days ago, because there was no consensus. That is the main problem.”
Though other airlifts to Darfur and Zaire are mentioned in the piece, there are also major differences. “Now there is a lot of talk about humanitarian airlift – delivering aid by air,” Tatikyan said. “Azerbaijan can say that there is no need for it because the Red Cross trucks can already pass and bring aid, place emphasis on this and reject it with such a technical reason.”
Nonetheless, this of course does not mean that Tatikyan is happy with the situation. “If we give the issue a purely humanitarian nature we can go for short-term solutions […] but the political and security issues will not be resolved,” she said. “That is, the blockade of Artsakh can be normalised and it said, here, some humanitarian aid is entering and people are not condemned to an extremely dire situation, so let it [Lachin] remain closed.”
Of course, Stepanakert’s airport, located in Khojaly, now renamed Ivanyan by the defacto authorities following the war of the early 1990s, is no stranger to controversy. Though it was operational back then, and I personally landed there in an Armenian military helicopter when I travelled from Yerevan to Karabakh in 1994, it wasn’t until 2008 that steps were taken to make it actually operational in the post-war period.
Indeed, when the construction of what is now a new and modern airport was completed in 2011, then Armenian President Serzh Sargsyan announced that he would be on onboard the first inaugural flight from Yerevan. Azerbaijan responded angrily and threatened to shoot down any aircraft entering what is internationally recognised as its airspace, and even though the physical territory below was out of Baku’s control.
A month later, those threats were walked back following international condemnation, and Baku stated that it would never “use force against civilian forces.” Nonetheless, the inauguration of the new airport never took place and no flights were ever launched. Stepanakert clearly hopes that this time will be different.
In the here and now, however, and though it is feasible that there could be international pressure on Azerbaijan to allow at least a humanitarian airlift given that supplies are reportedly running low, Baku will be reluctant to agree. As Tatikyan mentioned, Azerbaijan would simply point to the large number of Russian peacekeeping convoys and some International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) vehicles that can still transit through Lachin.
Moreover, Baku claims that, in fact, the highway is already open to all vehicles.
But, of course, there’s also a caveat. Azerbaijan would also insist that all goods should be inspected, something that the defacto Karabakh authorities have already rejected and certainly do not want. Such stops, they argue, would then inevitably lead to the normalisation of border and customs controls on a highway that had previously been largely free of them prior to the November 2020 trilateral ceasefire statement and even until 12 December 2022.
And this, of course, is the crux of the matter. There still remains disagreement between Yerevan and Baku over the ‘unimpeded movement of persons, vehicles and cargo in both directions from Azerbaijan to its exclave of Nakhichevan,’ as stipulated by the 2020 ceasefire statement. Azerbaijan therefore believes that if Armenia continues to insist on border and customs controls on that route, then it should have the same for the Lachin Corridor.
Though the impasse on the Lachin Corridor continues to be framed as an environmental protest, most analysts understand that it is actually more than just that. Indeed, the opening of what Azerbaijan has termed the ‘Zangezur Corridor ‘ remains a key objective for Baku. Meanwhile, some social media accounts even allege that Armenia has blockaded Nakhichevan, though this is far from the truth.
While Armenia’s border with Nakhichevan is indeed closed, the exclave also has land borders with Iran and Turkey while Karabakh only has the Lachin Corridor. Moreover, and somewhat ironically given these new calls for Karabakh’s airport to be opened, Azerbaijani commercial aircraft still continue to fly from Baku to Nakhichevan via Armenian airspace and have done so since October 2021.
Even so, a solution to the standoff on the Lachin Corridor continues to remain elusive with neither side willing to budge and thus, no end in sight. Indeed, Vardanyan has already told Karabakh’s population to be ready for a long winter. Certainly, it is highly unlikely that the airport is going to open even for an airlift.
