Russian Foreign Minister Denounces Yerevan for Its Stance on Zengezur Corridor

Paul Goble

            Staunton, Aug. 21 – When Armenia and Azerbaijan with Moscow’s help agreed to end the 44-day war in 2020, the two sides declared that as part of a peace settlement, they would agree to open transportation routes that had been blocked in the course of the three decades of conflict between the two South Caucasus countries.

            The most politically sensitive of these was the route between Azerbaijan proper and Azerbaijan’s non-contiguous Nakhichevan province that passes through the Syunik Oblast of Armenia and that is known to Azerbaijanis as the Zengezur corridor. Both Azerbaijan and Turkey have talked about taking control of that space and Armenia has resisted.

            As Baku and Yerevan have continued negotiations toward a peace treaty, they agreed on August 8 to postpone any decision about corridors, including Syunik/Zengezur because the two sides remain too far apart on those questions. That means that any peace treaty likely to be signed in the near term won’t make reference to them.

            Given the centrality of opening transportation corridors in the November 2020 Moscow declaration and the importance of such transport lines to the Russian Federation especially with regard to access to Iran, that has infuriated Moscow; and now Russian anger has burst into the open and sparked a sharp Armenian response.

            On August 19, during the second day of Putin’s visit to Baku, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov declared in the words of the Kavkaz-Uzel portal that “Armenia was sabotaging agreements about the opening of communications via the Zengezur corridor” and thus violating its November 2020 commitments (kavkaz-uzel.eu/articles/402894).

            Specifically, Lavrov said, “we are for the rapid conclusion of a peace treaty and the unblocking of transportation routes. Unfortunately, the Armenian government is sabotarging the agreement which Armenian Prime Minister N.V. Pashinyan signed earlier. It is difficult to understand the meaning of this position.”

            What Lavrov said represents a continuation of Moscow’s long-standing portrayal of the November 2020 declaration as an agreement when in fact it was only a statement of general intentions rather than a detailed description of what any of the parties was committing itself to do.  

            Not surprisingly, Yerevan reacted to Lavrov’s statement with anger. The Armenian foreign ministry said the Russian foreign minister’s suggestion that Yerevan was “sabotaging” the peace talks “does not correspond to reality.” Moreover, it “casts doubt” on Moscow’s role as a constructive participant in such discussions (moscowtimes.ru/2024/08/20/armeniya-obvinila-lavrova-volzhi-posle-zayavlenii-onagornom-karabahe-a139913).

            Armenia and Azerbaijan will continue to discuss unblocking trade routes, but they will not allow anyone to use that issue to slow progress on a more general peace agreement, the Armenian foreign ministry said, effectively sidelining Russia from these talks, exactly the reverse of what Lavrov clearly hoped for.