What is happening at the Azerbaijani-Armenian border?

Introduction

This question is concerning not only many analytics or politicians worldwide, but also people who are living at these territories and families of the soldiers, who died since September 12th. As always, while discussing such conflicts, there is a lot of desinformation and fake news around the current situation. I will explain step by step what has happened and is happening in a wider perspective and try to predict, what can we await within next days.

Azerbaijani soldiers, source: https://www.aa.com.tr/en/asia-pacific/azerbaijan-marks-102nd-anniversary-of-armed-forces/1891220

Resolute Response

This is the name of Azerbaijani military operation started at night 12th/13th September. Officially, the reason were multiple provocations from Armenian side and death of one Azerbaijani soldier. The aim was to destroy all of Armenian weapons which could be used by their army to attack Lachin and Kalbajar provinces of Azerbaijan. As a result, 50 Azerbaijani and 49 Armenian soldiers died (unofficial sources say that these numbers should be multiplied by 4 both sides), there are many wounded and prisoners of war (POWs). Armenian weapon with value estimated at about 0.5 mld $ has been destroyed, including two S-300 missile systems.

S-300 systems, source: https://www.aa.com.tr/en/asia-pacific/russian-s-300s-used-by-3-nato-member-countries/1449436

Moreover, Azerbaijani army mananged to take control over many positions and hills of strategic importance. Special forces - Yashma, took part in the fights, new war equipment has been used - Bayraktars, Harops etc. It is worth mentioning, that there is a Russian war base in Armenia. What did the soldiers? Nothing. Even there has been no alarm or so. Meanwhile, so-called peacekeepers are abandoning their places of stationing in Nagorno-Karabakh region in order to make some space for Azerbaijani army.

Russian peacekeeper in Karabakh, source: https://foreignpolicy.com/2020/11/25/russian-troops-nagorno-karabakh-peackeepers-win-moscow-armenia-azerbaijan/

International organisations & law

Starting from the end, a few words about international law should be said in this point. The border between Armenia and Azerbaijan has not been delimited yet. There were trials to create commissions composed of the representatives of both countries, but all of them were unsuccessful due to many reasons. According to the law, if the border is not delimited, it is a line created by armies of these countries. What does it mean in practice?

If Azerbaijani soldiers will make it to Yerevan, the border between Armenia and Azerbaijan will be in Yerevan.

Organisations will be presented shortly, including their actions:

1) UN - nothing as for now.

2) EU - some states condemned, some representatives in member states (mostly French) demand sanctions on Azerbaijan.

3) CSTO - Eastern equivalent of NATO should deploy their soldiers and help a member of the organisation, but they decided to create a commission of analysts which will go to Armenia in order to do some research on situation there. No one expreseed their readiness to help in a military way.

4) NATO - nothing, Turkey is one of the biggest members with modern army and the biggest weapon supplier of Azerbaijan. Second one is Israel, that is why USA officially stated that they encourage Armenia and Azerbaijan to look for a peaceful solution and told Russians, that they should use their influence in region to calm the situation down.

5) Organisation of Turkic States - condemned the Armenian military provocations againts Azerbaijan.

CSTO members` flags, source: https://www.azernews.az/region/142938.html

Future

In my opinion, Azerbaijan is not going to occupy Armenia or try to retake Yerevan (as many Armenians say). It would be a financial and ethnical problem for Baku to keep such territories calmly within one country, especially while we look at how much Armenians hate Azerbaijanis and their past terrorist attacks on Azerbaijani civillians. Attacking Armenia means dealing with people who used to live there and Azerbaijani politics is too much defined by the realism, to take such a risk.

International organisations will continue doing nothing or condemning the operation, but there will be no sanctions against Azerbaijan, especially from the EU. Speaking in basic words, we do not have gas for winter, so we have to buy it somewhere. We signed a memorandum with Azerbaijan and have to fulfill its resolutions in order not to freeze.

New EU ally?, source: https://neweasterneurope.eu/2022/07/29/a-new-chapter-in-eu-azerbaijani-relations-against-the-backdrop-of-the-russian-invasion-of-ukraine/

Azerbaijan will continue buying weapons in Turkey and Israel. Now its army has NATO+ standard (some of weapons used by Azerbaijani soldiers are not available in European states) and Turkish MFA clearly pointed out that they will be standing all the time with their cousins. Russia replied, that they will not interfere if so. Taking everything into account, this is the beginning of Turkish comeback at the Caucasus.

March 2022, source: https://www.mfa.gov.tr/sayin-bakanimizin-azerbaycan-i-ziyareti--5-mart-2022.en.mfa

What will happen in Armenia? Pashinyan is not a good leader, but there are no other reasonable options at the political scene. Armenian people are torn between smaller or bigger evil. The second problem is, which politician can be named as "smaller evil"? Due to unstability of internal policy, Azerbaijan is doing its job and regains more and more territory and could demand a corridor to Nakhchivan soon, but this time with use of armed forces.

Sources

Official websites of Ministries of Foreign Affairs of Azerbaijan - https://www.mfa.gov.az/en and Armenia https://www.mfa.am/en/

Press agencies: https://armenpress.am/eng/ ; https://azertag.az/ ; https://www.aa.com.tr/

Telegram channels: @MaidenTower, @KarabakhRu, @bagramyan26, @narodvidit, @reartsakh