Why did Azerbaijan attack Armenia on Sept. 12?

Armenia’s Defense Ministry said Azerbaijan attacked the areas of Goris, Sotk and Jermuk in Nagorno-Karabakh using drones and large-caliber weapons. Azerbaijan’s military admitted to the attacks but accused Armenian forces of planting mines along the border to disrupt supply routes. Yerevan denied the accusations. At least 49 people were killed in the strikes, Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan said Tuesday, adding, “Unfortunately, it’s not the final figure.” Azerbaijan also said it suffered losses but did not provide a casualty count. Regional analysts said Azerbaijan could have tried to capitalize on recent Russian setbacks in Ukraine. “This escalation takes place when (1) Russia is distracted as never before after the collapse of the Kharkiv front; and (2) offensive action against Armenia can surf the global wave of revulsion for Russia since Armenia is formally Russia’s ally,” Laurence Broers, an associate fellow of Chatham House’s Russia and Eurasia program, said on Twitter. Baku has “unprecedented leverage in every direction,” Broers added, as an increasingly isolated Moscow is now also reliant on land routes through Azerbaijan for trade with Asia and Iran. In July, the European Commission and Azerbaijan reached a deal to double gas exports to the E.U. within the next two years as the continent seeks out alternatives to Russian energy. The E.U. is pushing to “diversify away from Russia and to turn toward more reliable, trustworthy partners. And I am glad to count Azerbaijan among them,” European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen said at the time. Armenia on Tuesday appealed to Russia, the United States and France for help in ending the hostilities. Russia’s Foreign Ministry said it helped broker a truce for Tuesday morning. “As we have long made clear, there can be no military solution to the conflict,” Blinken said Monday in a statement. “We urge an end to any military hostilities immediately.”

What are the roots of the conflict?

As part of a divide-and-rule tactic, the Soviet government first established the autonomous region of Nagorno-Karabakh, where at least 95 percent of the population is ethnically Armenian, in Azerbaijan in the 1920s. But it wasn’t until 1988, as Moscow’s grip began to weaken, that the enclave became a flash point within the Soviet Union. Authorities in Nagorno-Karabakh sought to unite with the then-Soviet republic of Armenia and declared independence from Azerbaijan, another Soviet republic. In 1992, after the Soviet Union collapsed, a full-scale war broke out between the two new countries over control of the region. Nagorno-Karabakh is located within the internationally recognized borders of Azerbaijan but is mostly controlled by political factions linked to Armenia. Between 20,000 and 30,000 people were killed in that conflict and hundreds of thousands were displaced before a cease-fire was declared in 1994. Not only did Armenia end up controlling Nagorno-Karabakh but it also occupied 20 percent of the surrounding Azerbaijani territory, according to the Council on Foreign Relations .

What happened in 2020?

Between 1994 and 2020, periodic skirmishes flared along the border , including the use of attack drones, heavy weaponry and special operations on the front lines. In 2016, particularly fierce clashes between Azerbaijan and Armenian-backed forces in Nagorno-Karabakh raged for four days. But in 2020, a full-scale war broke out after Azerbaijan launched an offensive across the line of contact held by Armenian forces and local fighters. The campaign, which began on the morning of Sept. 27, sparked a six-week-long war. “The fighting is the worst it has been since the Karabakh War of 1992 to 1994, encompassing the entire line of contact, with artillery, missile, and drone strikes deep past Armenian lines,” Michael Kofman, director of the Russian studies program at the Center for Naval Analyses in Virginia, and Leonid Nersisyan, CEO of the Armenian Research & Development Institute, wrote at the time . The war, they said, featured “modern weaponry … representing a large-scale conventional conflict.” One of the major features of the war was the military support Turkey, a regional power and longtime foe of Armenia, gave Azerbaijan. In the months before the conflict broke out, Turkey’s military exports to Azerbaijan rose sixfold, according to exports data analyzed by Reuters . The sales included drones and other military equipment, which experts say helped turn the tide for Azerbaijan. As part of the Russia-mediated cease-fire, Armenia had to cede swaths of territory it controlled for decades. More than 7,000 combatants were killed, according to the International Crisis Group , and Russian peacekeepers were deployed to patrol the region. The cease-fire Russia brokered “brought neither full stability nor security to the region,” Alexa Fults and Paul Stronski of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace wrote in April. “And even before the Ukraine war, Moscow’s peacekeepers have struggled to do their jobs.” Russia, they said, arguably has the most influence of any outside power to push peace forward. But its resources and attention have been sapped by the war in Ukraine. “After the 2020 war, the front line has become longer and more volatile than before,” according to the International Crisis Group. Sammy Westfall contributed to this report.

Europe

The Nagorno-Karabakh conflict between Armenia and Azerbaijan, explained

By Isabelle Khurshudyan

Erin Cunningham

and

Miriam Berger

Updated September 13, 2022 at 12:24 p.m. EDT|Published August 4, 2022 at 8:59 p.m. EDT

An ethnic Armenian soldier stands guard next to Nagorno-Karabakh's flag atop a hill in the separatist region in Azerbaijan in November 2020. (Sergei Grits/AP)

The conflict between Armenia and Azerbaijan over the contested Nagorno-Karabakh region has simmered for decades. In 2020, the two sides fought a bloody war for territory — one that ended with a fragile Russian-brokered truce.

But on Monday night, fierce clashes erupted again near the disputed region, which is inside Azerbaijan but controlled by ethnic Armenian separatists.

Azerbaijan and Armenia exchange fire in Nagorno-Karabakh border zone

Armenian officials said at least 49 people were killed in attacks by Azerbaijan’s military. Azerbaijan acknowledged launching the strikes — but said it was responding to Armenian provocations.

The renewed fighting prompted the State Department to call for an immediate end to the hostilities. Reuters reported Tuesday morning that Secretary of State Antony Blinken spoke overnight with both the Armenian prime minister and president of Azerbaijan.

Russia is a key ally of Armenia, and some observers speculated that Azerbaijan may have sought to attack while Moscow is bogged down by a tough fight in Ukraine.

Here’s what you need to know about the fight over Nagorno-Karabakh, the longest-running conflict in the post-Soviet sphere.