Doubts grow about Russia’s influence in the former USSR after the Karabakh crisis

Sept 22 (Reuters) – Russian foreign policy hawks savored chaotic scenes at Kabul airport as U.S. forces left Afghanistan two years ago. Images of Armenians fleeing Russia’s own peacekeeping base at an airport in Nagorno-Karabakh It has been more difficult for them to observe.

Just as Washington’s withdrawal led some Americans to worry about American power and emboldened their enemies, the apparent helplessness of Russian peacekeepers stationed in Karabakh to prevent Turkish-backed Azerbaijani forces from invading leverage The area by force is uncomfortable for Moscow.

Karabakh, an ethnic Armenian enclave internationally recognized as Azerbaijan but ruled by a separatist administration since a war in the early 1990s, is in a corner of the former Soviet Union that Moscow considers its own backyard but where its influence is under control. pressure from Turkey. Azerbaijan and Iran at a time when it is distracted by its own war in Ukraine.

Russia, which has military facilities, including an air base, in Armenia, has signaled that it has no intention of withdrawing its forces from the South Caucasus, a region crisscrossed by oil and gas pipelines.

But his handling of the Karabakh crisis has forced him into a blame game with Armenia and forced it to defend its foreign policy in the region.

Hundreds of people are believed to have been killed in Karabakh in recent days, where more than 100,000 ethnic Armenian civilians will now have to choose between exile from what they consider their historic homeland or integration into what many of them consider a state. hostile despite Azerbaijan’s assurances.

“The dramatic photographs of many frightened people at Stepanakert airport (in Karabakh) are an obvious visual rhyme with the photographs of crowds at Kabul airport in 2021,” said Alexander Baunov, a former Russian diplomat who is now a senior fellow at Carnegie. Think. -tank.

“Moscow concluded from the Kabul images that the United States was weak and that the historic opportunity to negotiate with Ukraine had arrived. Who will draw what conclusions from the Karabakh images?”

The anger some Russians feel over what they see as waning influence in the South Caucasus has been amplified by the deaths of five Russian peacekeepers in an apparent accident involving Azerbaijani forces.

Photographs of the incident posted on social media showed the rear windshield of the vehicle in which the Russian soldiers were traveling riddled with bullets.

“Azerbaijan defeated Karabakh with a clear taste of Russian blood on its lips,” wrote Zhivov Z, one of many Russian military bloggers who have risen to prominence as commentators on the Ukraine war.

“All those who are now dancing around the Azerbaijani victory, you are dancing on the bodies of Russian officers,” he wrote, calling, along with other bloggers, for Moscow to retaliate against Baku.

An outbreak of anti-Russian sentiment in Armenia, traditionally one of Russia’s closest allies, has made the situation more difficult for Moscow, whose resources and attention are under strain from the war in Ukraine.

Protesters who say they feel betrayed by Russia’s failure to stop Azerbaijan have gathered outside the Russian embassy in Yerevan, the Armenian capital, and chanted anti-Russian slogans.

“This is a dangerous trend,” said Sergei Markov, a former Kremlin adviser. “Anti-Russian hysteria is being fueled.”

THE LIMITATION OF DAMAGE

Nikol Pashinyan, Prime Minister of Armenia, angered Moscow in the run-up to the crisis by saying it had been a mistake rely solely on Russia to protect the security of their country.

Accusing the roughly 2,000 Russian peacekeepers in Karabakh of not doing their jobs, he deliberately held joint military exercises with U.S. forces and promised to diversify Yerevan’s security partners.

Russia has responded with a damage limitation exercise, placing the blame for the debacle squarely on Pashinyan and accusing him of diplomatic incompetence and ingratitude.

Pashinyan, who came to power thanks to 2018 street protests that diluted Russian influence, has long been seen by Moscow as too pro-Western. He now accuses him of triggering the crisis by saying – after the deployment of Russian peacekeepers to Karabakh in 2020 following Armenia’s defeat in a 44-day war – that he recognized Azerbaijan’s territorial integrity.

Baku has long maintained that Karabakh is within its own borders, but Karabakh Armenians wanted Pashinyan to recognize their independence and unify them with Armenia.

Some Russian officials such as Dmitry Medvedev, vice president of the Security Council, have signaled that they would be happy to see Pashinyan, who now faces calls from rivals for him to resign, ousted.

“Guess what fate awaits him?” Medvedev wrote on Tuesday, the day Azerbaijan sent its forces to Karabakh, after publishing a list of what he considered mistakes by Pashinyan, including “flirting with NATO.”

Russia may be on the defensive, but it believes Armenia’s room for maneuver is limited, whoever is in charge.

Margarita Simonyan, one of Russia’s most powerful state media administrators and herself of Armenian descent, said Moscow should not have to explain its actions in Karabakh to Pashinyan, whom she accused of betraying his own people.

“Russia can do without Armenia,” he wrote. “Armenia cannot do without Russia.”

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