A bitter standoff is continuing around Nagorno-Karabakh as an Azerbaijani blockade shuts out supplies and separates families.
GORIS, Armenia -- Margo Baghdasarian’s hands shake as she recounts the nearly unimaginable sequence of events that led to her being stranded in southern Armenia away from her husband, daughter, and two grandchildren.
In April 2016, Baghdasarian’s soldier son was killed fighting Azerbaijani forces during what Armenians call the “Four Day War.” Then, her son-in-law died fighting advancing Azerbaijani troops in the Second Nagorno-Karabakh War in September-November 2020. During that conflict, Azerbaijan regained control of much of Nagorno-Karabakh and adjacent territories that had been held by Armenian forces. More than 6,500 people died in the fighting.
Baghdasarian said the stress of the double tragedies caused her such severe health issues that she needed to have a heart operation in the nearby Armenian town of Goris.
“I wanted to get better so I could go and help my family,” the 61-year-old said.
Baghdasarian’s widowed daughter was grappling at the time with raising two children without their father.
Shortly after Baghdasarian left the breakaway region of Nagorno-Karabakh for Goris for her surgery, Azerbaijani “eco-activists” -- generally seen as acting at the behest of Baku -- blockaded the only road, called the Lachin Corridor, leading into Nagorno-Karabakh on December 12.
The pensioner has been living in limbo ever since, one of hundreds of Karabakh Armenians who have been cut off from their families. According to Goris’s city hall, some 300 Karabakh Armenians are currently accommodated in the town, while around 700 more have moved in with family or friends throughout Armenia as they wait to return home.
Armenia and Azerbaijan have clashed over Nagorno-Karabakh for decades. The mainly ethnic Armenian enclave is part of Azerbaijan but has been under the control of ethnic Armenian forces backed by Armenia since a separatist war there ended in 1994. Russia has some 2,000 peacekeepers deployed in Nagorno-Karabakh after brokering a cease-fire between Armenia and Azerbaijan in late 2020.
As the blockade stretches into its ninth week, it appears the approximately 100,000 ethnic Armenians trapped inside Nagorno-Karabakh are settling in for a long, bitter test of wills.
Marut Vanyan, a freelance journalist living in Stepanakert, the largest city in the Nagorno-Karabakh region, which is known as Xankendi in Azeri, said documenting the unfolding humanitarian crisis has become more difficult as trapped locals scold him for revealing the difficulty of life inside the besieged city.
When fresh fruit and vegetables -- which are rumored to be smuggled in by Russian peacekeepers -- appear in Stepanakert, the photographer said people gather in “an unbearable, humiliating line,” adding that when he tried to take a photo of empty shelves, a man asked him rhetorically, "Do you want Azerbaijanis to see this and celebrate it?”
For Armenian friends and family on the other side of the blockade, the reality of the conditions for residents of Nagorno-Karabakh can be hard to gauge.
Yeva Dalakian, a youth worker in Goris, said that Karabakh Armenians she knows are largely surviving on stores of summer produce such as potatoes, and preserved food from villages.
“Some of my friends I’m talking to moved back to their village and are working remotely," she said. "But the thing is that people in Nagorno-Karabakh are very proud, and they don’t like to complain, so sometimes it’s difficult to understand what is truly going on.”
Some supplies are trickling through the blockade, both openly and possibly in secret. The International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) has been permitted to transport some medical supplies and food to people in urgent need inside the blockade. As of early February, the ICRC had transferred 95 people through the blockade, mostly children being sent in to be reunited with their parents, and very sick patients being taken out.
Locals in Goris say relatives of blockaded Karabakh Armenians have approached Russian soldiers to ask them to smuggle supplies through the blockade, though it is unclear if anyone has had success with the tactic.
In Goris’s city hall, Deputy Mayor Irina Yolian sits behind the flags of Armenia and the internationally unrecognized Republic of Artsakh -- the word Armenians use for the Nagorno-Karabakh region.
When asked about the international response to the ongoing blockade, Yolian appears to reference the gas deal struck between Azerbaijan and the European Union last summer, which led to a controversial statement from European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen in which she counted the authoritarian state among the bloc’s “reliable, trustworthy partners.”
“When we are talking about humanitarian values and human lives, these things should be more important than, for example, gas,” the Goris official said.
She then pointed to what she believes was the muted international response to Azerbaijan invading undisputed Armenian territory in September 2022.
“While Western states armed Ukraine [in its fight against Russia’s 2022 invasion] and support [Kyiv] in other ways, Armenia gets only words and well wishes,” Yolian said.
Armenian officials have also pointed the finger at Russia for apparently allowing the blockade to continue. The Kremlin is notorious for violently breaking up domestic protests, but Russian peacekeepers have so far made no effort to reopen the road to Nagorno-Karabakh by force.
In her hotel in Goris, Baghdasarian stresses how grateful she is for the help that has been provided for her in Goris, but her eyes well up as she speaks to her daughter and granddaughter by phone.
“I just want to go home. That’s all I ask for,” she said, adding that her hometown of Stepanakert is where her son was buried. “I was born there, and I want to die there. I want my grave to be next to my son’s.”
