By Anton Evstratov
Russia’s actions in Ukraine have forced the republics of the South Caucasus to seek unique models of behavior toward Russia, Ukraine, and the West.
Russia’s special operation in Ukraine came as a surprise to both societies and political elites in the South Caucasus. At the same time, it had a direct impact on each of the three internationally recognized republics in the region, as well as on the three unrecognized ones.
In particular, the first group of countries had to work hard to maintain the most painless balance between good relations with Russia and the goodwill of the West. In this sense, the territorial integrity of Ukraine is of secondary interest to each of the republics of the South Caucasus, through the prism of its perception in Washington or Brussels, although Azerbaijan and Georgia have in a sense similar problems with Ukraine in Nagorno-Karabakh and Abkhazia and South Ossetia respectively.
It should be noted that Russia currently has effective and direct leverage over the security of each of the countries in the region.
This is especially relevant to the Armenian-Azerbaijani conflict in Nagorno-Karabakh, where Moscow is the moderator of the compliance with the points of the ceasefire statement of November 10, 2020, which ended the Second Karabakh (44-day) war. By personally participating in the signing of the mentioned trilateral document, as well as having about 2 thousand peacekeepers directly in the territory of Nagorno-Karabakh, Russian President Vladimir Putin has a direct influence on both Armenia and Azerbaijan. Moreover, both Armenia and Azerbaijan are the allies of the Russian Federation, and are obliged to build their foreign and, in a sense, domestic policy with the glance of Moscow. It is noteworthy that Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev was forced to sign a document on allied cooperation with the Russian Federation even after Russia recognized the Donetsk and Lugansk republics, despite the fact that such a precedent is the sword of Damocles over Nagorno-Karabakh, also a zone of Moscow’s interests.
At the same time, Azerbaijan undoubtedly considers the Karabakh settlement according to its own scenario as the price and the main goal of the mentioned “Declaration on allied cooperation”. Many things have changed since the start of the Russian operation, because on the one hand it frightened and angered the generally anti-Russian Azerbaijani society, but on the other, it untied the hands of the military and political leadership of Azerbaijan for more decisive actions against the Armenian population of Nagorno-Karabakh. Russia, according to Azerbaijani strategists, is too busy in Ukraine to adequately respond to Azerbaijani demarches. As a result, Azerbaijanis cut off the Armenian republic of Artsakh from gas supply for a few weeks, blocking the gas pipeline passing through the territory occupied by Azerbaijani troops, and then during the battles, using a drone Bayraktar, they occupied the Armenian village of Parukh and the Karaglukh hill in the Askeran district of Artsakh. The Russian peacekeepers, as expected by the Azerbaijanis, were not able to prevent any of these actions. And if in the end, with the help of Russian political pressure, the gas supply to the Artsakh people’s houses was resumed, while the Azerbaijani military left the village of Parukh, the Karaglukh hill remained under their control.
The situation in Nagorno-Karabakh is exacerbated, among other things, by rumors that Russia is moving its troops from there to Ukraine, experiencing a shortage of trained military personnel in the main theater of military operations. Although Moscow denies such information and apparently does not need several hundred fighters from Karabakh in a large-scale Ukrainian campaign, these rumors motivate both the Azerbaijani military and political leadership and society. As a result, Azerbaijani troops aggravate the situation on the line of contact almost daily, both with units of the Artsakh Defense Army in Karabakh and with the armed forces of Armenia proper, on the internationally recognized territories of the RA borders.
The issue of the recognition of borders is also a tool of Azerbaijan’s pressure on Armenia, which Baku seeks to implement without sufficient support of Yerevan by Russia – despite the fact that the parties de facto mutually recognized their borders back in the early 1990s, when they joined the UN and CIS, Baku is pushing the agenda of “delimitation” of borders with Armenia in light of its occupation of territories of the Artsakh Republic, which directly border the Armenian Syunik and Gegharkunik regions, as well as in the Tavush region of Armenia. In the same Syunik region the Azerbaijanis occupy RA territories in the Black Lake area, and so far neither Yerevan’s position nor Russian intervention has forced them to leave.
At the same time, the rigidity of Azerbaijan’s position is added by its extremely strong relations with Ukraine, as well as the presence in Baku of an ally alternative to Russia – Turkey. Kiev has supported Azerbaijan and its “territorial integrity” in the Karabakh conflict since the early 1990s in all international forums, and during the last war it actively provided logistical (through Ukraine a significant part of the supplies of Turkish weapons to Baku) and military assistance (including the supply of phosphorus munitions, banned by several international agreements).
Azerbaijan simply cannot but repay its partner for all of the above. As a result, Baku actively sends humanitarian aid to Ukraine, and gas stations belonging to the Azerbaijani oil and gas giant Socar provide free fuel not only to civilians, but also to Ukrainian armed forces and paramilitary formations.
In addition, Azerbaijan seeks to benefit economically from Europe’s desire to abandon Russian gas by actively offering its own gas facilities. In particular, we are talking about the pipelines going through Turkey (Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan and beyond). The relevant supplies have already begun, but there will be no fundamental changes in the political and economic configuration – Azerbaijan simply does not have enough energy resources for export. At the same time, Baku has exported its gas to the Balkan countries and Italy before. Nevertheless, the gesture towards Russia is clearly unfriendly, which the Kremlin cannot but see and realize.
As a kind of “compensation” for this kind of policy, the Azerbaijani leadership is trying to avoid votes and discussions on issues that are painful for Russia – for example, Azerbaijani delegates simply did not show up at the vote on the exclusion of Russia from the Council of Europe.
The second side of the Armenian-Azerbaijani conflict, Armenia, is much more dependent on Russia than Azerbaijan, both politically (as a member of the CSTO and an ally of Russia on a bilateral basis) and economically (as a member of the EAEU and a consumer of significant volumes of Russian goods in various spheres – from energy to food), and militarily (at least 10 thousand Russian servicemen are stationed in Armenia, and it is Russian peacekeepers in Artsakh that now depend on the physical survival of the Armenian population of this unrecognized republic. Russian border guards guard Armenia’s borders with Turkey and Iran, as well as perform customs control at Zvartnots airport). Armenia has a vested interest in extending the authority of the Russian peacekeeping contingent in Nagorno-Karabakh beyond 2025 (when it should end) and restoring its economy and military infrastructure in light of its defeat in the 44-day war.
In this context, Yerevan demonstrates the highest level of support for Russia’s actions in Ukraine among all recognized states (with the exception of Belarus). Yerevan voted against the expulsion of the Russian Federation from the Council of Europe, abstained from voting to terminate Russia’s powers at the UN Human Rights Council, and refused to condemn Moscow at the UN General Assembly.
There is no doubt that Armenia, and especially its current, relatively pro-Western leadership, is not ready to abandon rapprochement with the West – in particular, with the EU, at least in the long term. Furthermore, Brussels also, along with Moscow, plays a role in the Armenian-Azerbaijani negotiations. Therefore, Yerevan has refused to take some of the most odious actions in the eyes of the political elites of the countries of the old continent – for example, the recognition of territories, the recognition of the independence of the Donetsk and Lugansk republics.
In addition, Armenia is tacitly positioning itself as a peculiar “island of freedom” in the EAEU and post-Soviet space in general, where refugees from Russia (opposed to the Russian authorities) and Ukraine (with similar political views) can safely settle down, and the positions of the local population demonstrate a very wide range of opinions, assessments and judgments. This is why there were mass rallies in Armenia, both in support of the Russian special operation and in solidarity with Ukraine. Moreover, Armenia, being a member of the EAEU and having the highest level of economic relations with Russia, has so far managed to evade Western sanctions, which attracts Russian businessmen, freelancers, and people of other professions seeking to find the most comfortable working conditions for themselves in light of the restrictions introduced against Russia. According to some estimates, up to 200 thousand of such citizens have already passed through Armenia, about a quarter of whom stayed for a more or less long period of time. Seeking to integrate them, Yerevan hopes to win economically – especially in light of the imminent economic difficulties of its main trade and economic partner and political patron. At the same time, the technical and socio-economic capabilities of the country put the integration of any significant part of Russian emigrants under serious question.
Georgian society, unlike Armenian society, in turn, is mostly negatively disposed toward the actions of the Russian Federation. This is also evident in its attitude to Russian migrants arriving in Georgia – unlike Armenia, Georgians showed much less joy at their arrival, and numerous cases of domestic xenophobia have already been recorded. There are frequent rallies in Tbilisi against Russia and in support of Ukraine, because Georgian citizens generally feel solidarity with Ukrainians, who also “lost territories” (Abkhazia and South Ossetia) and “were subjected to Russian aggression” (in 2008).
The Georgian government, however, took a more moderate stance, announcing its refusal to join the anti-Russian sanctions, and then only limitedly introducing some restrictive measures in the banking sector. Such actions of the Cabinet of Ministers and its Chairman Irakli Garibashvili personally can be explained by Georgia’s economic dependence on Russia to a lesser extent and the sword of Damocles of security to another extent. The fact is that Tbilisi’s open support for Ukraine will completely untie Moscow’s hands in the integration – including formal – of South Ossetia and Abkhazia. Western countries will not be able to prevent it, limiting themselves to formal condemnation, and on their own Georgia will not be able to stop Russia. This will inevitably lead to the fall of the current government and a total shake-up of all Georgian socio-political realities, not to mention possible economic and other problems.
A kind of “cudgel” from the Russian side was the presidential elections in South Ossetia, where one of the candidates, now former president Bibilov, directly promised to hold a referendum on becoming a member of the Russian Federation. The fact that he lost the election, and that the republic’s elected leader Alan Gagloev has no intention of pushing this issue so far, indicates that Moscow and Tbilisi “understand each other” and are satisfied with each other’s positions at the moment.
Thus, the direct dependence of the South Caucasus states on the situation in Ukraine and on the Russian special operation is projected into extremely ambiguous processes and phenomena – attempts to build multi-vectorism in Azerbaijan, a pro-Russian position with no alternative with a view to Armenia’s future and the pragmatic, although formally quite hostile to Moscow neutrality of Georgia. A victory for Russia would undoubtedly strengthen the positions of the RA and the unrecognized republics of the region, while a defeat or its perception would inevitably strengthen centrifugal tendencies towards Russia, creating prerequisites for an increasingly easy penetration of Turkey, as well as indirectly of EU states and the United States, into the region.
Author: Anton Evstratov (Russian historian, publicist and journalist living in Armenia, lecturer at the Department of World History and Foreign Regional Studies at the Russian-Armenian University in Yerevan).
(The views expressed in this article belong only to the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of World Geostrategic Insights).
Image source: Tass