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AzerNEWS Staff

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The recent article in the Financial Times regarding the results of Armenia's recent elections rightly captures a shifting geopolitical reality: Russia’s global and regional influence is on a steep decline. The author aptly illustrates how Moscow’s reliance on brute physical force to reclaim its imperial nostalgia, rather than implementing internal reforms, has backfired spectacularly. It is a textbook case of the remedy proving far worse than the disease. The unnecessary war of conquest in Ukraine has indeed dealt Moscow consecutive global blows, severely deteriorating its strategic standing.

However, as one reads the article to the end, the biased and flawed commentary regarding Azerbaijan triggers a sense of deep disappointment. While it is difficult to ascertain the exact motives behind this bias, the text suffers from a fundamental paradox. On one hand, the author celebrates the weakening of Russian influence in the South Caucasus. On the other hand, they paradoxically adopt the exact rhetoric of the puppet separatist regimes that Russia created to maintain that very influence. This is a glaring contradiction that completely undermines the analytical credibility of the piece.

The contradictions concerning Azerbaijan are so profound that they leave the reader bewildered. For instance, the author correctly acknowledges that a Moscow-linked, corrupt kleptocracy had occupied Karabakh, and that the Kremlin used this proxy regime for decades to maintain its grip on the South Caucasus. This is an accurate historical fact. As the Soviet Union collapsed, Moscow deliberately engineered frozen conflicts, such as in Abkhazia, South Ossetia, and Karabakh, as part of a classic "divide and rule" strategy to keep its military boots on the ground. Having exhausted nearly three decades of fruitless peace negotiations, Azerbaijan ultimately launched a counter-offensive to liberate its internationally recognized territories. It was precisely this liberation that forced the Armenian state and society to finally realize that being a geopolitical puppet brings no sustainable future.

Despite these facts—many of which the author implicitly concedes—the article resorts to skillful wordplay to misrepresent the situation. It shifts the blame onto Azerbaijan, effectively vindicating the corrupt, Russia-backed occupation that had previously turned nearly one million Azerbaijanis into internally displaced persons (IDPs) and refugees.

Consider the following sentence from the article:

"Russia’s grip on its South Caucasus satellite was broken in two military defeats that Armenia suffered against Azerbaijan over the disputed territory of Nagorno-Karabakh, in the second in 2023, Azerbaijani forces seized the whole of the enclave, forcing out its 100,000 Armenian inhabitants, in effect ending the conflict."

This narrative mirrors the exact propaganda of those forces wishing to see Russia remain in the region permanently. There are five critical flaws in this framing:

Terminology: The term "Nagorno-Karabakh" is outdated. The autonomous status of the region was legally abolished before the dissolution of the Soviet Union; the correct name is Karabakh.

Legal Status: Karabakh was never a "disputed territory." Not a single country in the world—not even Armenia itself—recognized it as an independent entity. International law and multiple UN Security Council resolutions explicitly recognized it as an integral part of Azerbaijan.

The Question of Exodus: Azerbaijan repeatedly and publicly declared that it viewed the local Armenian residents of Karabakh as its own citizens, offering them the choice to stay, provided they accepted Azerbaijani citizenship and passports. The local population chose to leave voluntarily. Those few who remained suffered no harm, proving that no systemic violence occurred.

Inflated Numbers: The claim of "100,000 Armenian inhabitants" relies on heavily inflated statistics provided by the former separatist regime. It is baffling why the author chooses to echo the unverified figures of a puppet regime they otherwise criticize.

Selective Empathy: While mourning the voluntary departure of Karabakh Armenians, the author completely ignores the tragic fate of over 1 million Azerbaijanis who were brutally expelled from Karabakh and its surrounding seven districts in the 1990s, as well as the Azerbaijani community ethnically cleansed from Armenia itself. Furthermore, the author fails to mention that during that era, even ethnic Muslim Kurds living in Armenia were expelled—a fact that exposes the absolute intolerance of the mono-ethnic state model implemented there.

The author further claims: "Russia failed to intervene on either occasion, despite its collective security commitments to Yerevan. Armenian voters have not forgiven Moscow for its betrayal." This again echoes the contradictory grievances of the separatist mindset. Russia’s actual military capability is a separate discussion, but the crucial point is that Moscow had no legal basis to intervene. Under the CSTO treaty, Russia’s commitments to Armenia apply strictly to attacks on Armenia's sovereign territory.

However, despite numerous provocations from the Armenian side—including the launching of ballistic missiles from Armenian territory into Azerbaijani civilian cities, which killed and wounded dozens of innocent women and children— during the 44-day war in 2020, Azerbaijan never crossed into or struck Armenian proper territory. In a tragic irony, one of the Armenian missiles fired into Azerbaijan hit the home of an ethnic Armenian who was a citizen of Azerbaijan. This tragic fact alone dismantles the narrative of ethnic targeting. The war was fought entirely on Azerbaijani soil. On what legal grounds was Russia supposed to join the war?

Regrettably, these self-contradictory narratives surface periodically in Western media. One is left to wonder whether this stems from the heavy influence of the Armenian diaspora lobby or a profound ignorance of the region's historical and legal realities.

It remains an undeniable truth that Russia created separatist proxies to hold the South Caucasus hostage. One of those artificial regimes, the Karabakh proxy, has now been relegated to the dusty shelves of history. It is also an undeniable truth that this conflict brought immense suffering and stunted the economic potential of the entire region. Economically, Armenia suffered the most, experiencing massive depopulation, economic isolation, and widespread poverty.

Today, the region stands at the threshold of new opportunities and regional integration. It would be far more constructive for international commentators to focus on these emerging prospects for peace and prosperity, rather than using the pretext of criticizing Russia to legitimize the stale rhetoric of defunct separatist regimes.