UPDATED: Flash Report 19 SEP 2023 - 04:45 PDT - War Breaks Out Between Azerbaijan and Armenia

The Azerbaijani Ministry of Defense announced the start of a military operation in Karabakh following a series of alleged attacks, with the aim of disarming the breakaway Republic of  Artsakh. Azerbaijan officials are claiming there were a series of provocations that led up to the military action, which Armenia vehemently denies.

The Azerbaijani MOD released a statement, saying, "In the last few months, the Armenian armed forces units in the Karabakh region of Azerbaijan systematically fired at the positions of the Azerbaijani Army from various calibers of weapons, continued mining of our territories, engineering improvements of the combat positions, as well as increasing the number of trenches and shelters, caused an increase in tension.

In this regard, the strengthening of combat positions with personnel, armored vehicles, artillery installations, and other means of fire, bringing the units to a high level of combat readiness, creating additional units for mobilization, expanding intelligence activities against the units of the Azerbaijan Army, infiltrating the depths of our positions, demining areas and civilian targets. Actions such as re-mining of roads for the purpose of terrorist provocation have been detected by our observations.

On September 19, a vehicle belonging to the State Agency of Azerbaijan Highways was destroyed, and civilians were killed as a result of the explosion of a mine pre-installed for terrorist purposes by the intelligence-sabotage teams of the units of the Armenian armed forces in the Karabakh region of Azerbaijan on the Ahmedbeyli-Fuzuli-Shusha highway. On the same day, our military personnel were killed and injured as a result of a mine planted by the intelligence-sabotage groups of the Armenian armed forces, which was carrying military personnel of the Internal Troops of the Ministry of Internal Affairs. Such facts are a continuation of the purposeful and planned terrorist policy of Armenia against Azerbaijan.

The Ministry of Defense of the Republic of Azerbaijan has repeatedly stated that, contrary to the provisions of the tripartite statement signed on November 10, 2020, the continued presence of the Armenian armed forces in the Karabakh region of Azerbaijan is a serious threat to regional peace and stability.

Ensuring the provisions of the tripartite declaration, preventing large-scale provocations committed in the Karabakh economic region, disarming and withdrawing the units of the Armenian armed forces from our territories, neutralizing their military infrastructure, ensuring the safety of the civilian population returning to the liberated territories, as well as civilian workers and military personnel involved in reconstruction and reconstruction works. anti-terrorist measures of a local nature have been started in the region in order to ensure and restore the constitutional structure of the Republic of Azerbaijan.

Within the framework of the measures, front-line and deep positions and long-term firing points, as well as combat vehicles and military facilities of the Armenian armed forces, are disabled by the use of high-precision weapons.

We reiterate that the civilian population and infrastructure facilities are not targeted. Only legitimate military targets are disabled.

The command of the Russian peacekeeping contingent and the management of the Turkey-Russia Joint Monitoring Center were informed about the measures taken."

Armenia is part of the CSTO Alliance, which is Russia's version of NATO. The six CSTO nations are the Russian Federation, Armenia, Belarus, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, and Tajikistan. Tajikistan and Kyrgyzstan have an ongoing border dispute that has flared into hostilities in the last year, and Belarus is wrapped around the Kremlin's finger with Russia's war of aggression in Ukraine. Over 90% of Russia's land forces are in Ukraine or directly supporting its war of aggression against Ukraine, leaving Kazakhstan the only CSTO member not already at war, supporting a war, or ready to fight a war with another CSTO member.

Very nice!

On September 14, 2022, when Armenia and Azerbaijan were engaged in a brief but violent conflict, Armenia made a CSTO Article IV declaration, equivalent to NATO Article V. The Kremlin rejected the request offering to send observers. From September 12 to 14, up to 300 people were killed, including civilians. On the same day that Armenia and Azerbaijan reached a ceasefire, Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan entered into a four-day clash that left over 150 dead, including civilians, and accusations of war crimes by both combatants.

It was under this backdrop that Armenia hosted the CSTO Alliance Summit in Yerevan on November 23-24. At the end of the summit, Armenia refused to sign a draft declaration due to the absence of a statement addressing Azerbaijan’s aggression.

Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinian said, "Under these conditions, the lack of a clear political assessment of the situation and the failure to make the above decision may not only mean the CSTO's refusal from allied obligations but may also be interpreted by Azerbaijan as a green light from the CSTO for further aggression against Armenia,"

With the CSTO leaders sitting at a round table and the signing ceremony on live TV, Pashinian declared the summit over and walked out of the room. Russian President Vladimir Putin was so stunned the pen fell out of his hand.

Over eight months ago, Azerbaijan blockaded the Lachin Corridor, the only route to the Republic of Artsakh, a 120,000-person Armenian-controlled break-away enclave in the Nagorno-Karabakh region of Azerbaijan. The path from the present to the past leads to the fall of the Soviet Union and further back to centuries of ethnic violence in the Caucus region.

Artsakh is internationally recognized as part of Azerbaijan, with the first clashes over control of the region erupting in 1988 as the Soviet Union started to crumble. A ceasefire was declared in 1994, with renewed hostilities restarting In 2020, leaving over 7,000 dead. After a new ceasefire, Russia deployed peacekeepers to Azerbaijan, a non-CSTO nation that leans to the West, to keep the Lachin Corridor open.

However, Moscow was flexing its political will in the region, fomenting the ethnic Armenians of Nagorno-Karabakh to declare independence and the desire to become part of the Russian Federation. In March 2022, Russian propagandist Margarita Simonyan of RT said the quiet part out loud. While Simoyan is not a representative of the Russian government, RT is tightly aligned with the Kremlin and is an engine of Russian propaganda and disinformation.

Also, in March 2022, Russia's war of aggression against Ukraine was not going to plan. Russian troops were crushed at Kyiv and Chernihiv in a humiliating defeat, losing thousands of troops and hundreds of pieces of some of its best military hardware. To continue its war of aggression and reconstitute units, Russia started drawing down its peacekeepers and military hardware from regions around the world, including the Lachin Corridor. It only took 12 hours for tension to flare. 

That brings us back to the present and the ongoing Azerbaijan blockade. In August 2023, relief organizations reported that the first death from malnutrition had occurred in Artsakh, and the situation would get much worse without a resolution. On August 16, the United Nations demanded that the blockade be lifted and relief aid be allowed to pass, which Azerbaijan ignored.

A review of the maps of Azerbaijan and Armenia shows a patchwork quilt of locked enclaves in both nations and does not include the disputed territories in Nagorno-Karabakh, which has fueled years of territorial disputes and tension.

When Pashinian ended the CSTO Summit in 2022, refusing to sign the declaration, and Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan almost reaching all-out war during the week of September 14, we assessed that the world was witnessing the beginning of the end of the CSTO Alliance.

In May 2023, Armenia declared they would remain in CSTO but is leveraging a slight thawing in relations with Türkiye and reaching out to the United States. Currently, the United States and Armenia are holding joint military exercises, adding complexity to the situation.

The CSTO Alliance is really the Russian Federation and several other countries that are covered by the Kremlin's umbrella. Prior to 2022, this was a convenient relationship. The Kremlin could exert its power, and the CSTO members had a nuclear-armed sugar daddy. It's not 2021 anymore.

Russian losses in Ukraine could be as many as 260,000 troops since February 24, 2022, and there is significant evidence that up to 45% of all Russian military land war hardware is damaged, destroyed, or needs extensive reconditioning due to neglect.

Complicating the situation, Russia's dismantling of Private Military Company Wagner Group is backfiring in Africa, with the West African branch of al Qaeda, called Jama'at Nusrat al-Islam wal Muslimeen (JNIM), launching a series of brutal attacks on the remaining Wagner mercenaries, the troops of the interim government of Mali, and non-Muslim civilians.

If Armenia makes another Article IV declaration, Moscow is going to be in an incredibly difficult position and could find itself trying to hold back an ongoing Ukrainian offensive while sinking into a Sahel and Caucus quagmire of its own making.

Regardless of the geopolitical swamp that extends over three continents, more civilians are going to die.