In Georgia, police wearing balaclavas have in recent weeks attacked crowds demonstrating against a Kremlin-inspired law that undermines western-backed non-governmental organisations and here, in this lush border zone a three-hour drive from Yerevan, Armenian officials are conceding land to Kremlin-backed Azerbaijan after several military defeats since 2020.
Armenia’s relations with the Kremlin have soured over Russia’s failure to protect it despite security guarantees amid its war on Ukraine.
In September, Azerbaijan completed its capture of the disputed region of Nagorno-Karabakh after Russian peacekeepers were ordered to stand aside moments before an assault, which some believe was approved by the Kremlin.
Ilham Aliyev, Azerbaijan’s president, was seen laughing and joking with Vladimir Putin in the Kremlin days after Russia withdrew 2,000 peacekeeping soldiers from Nagorno-Karabakh because “they were no longer needed”.
Tigran Grigoryan, head of the regional centre for democracy and security think tank in Yerevan, said that Azerbaijan’s military superiority, often financed by oil and gas sales to Europe, the Kremlin’s preoccupation with its war in Ukraine and Azerbaijan’s importance for Russian trade routes to Iran encouraged Mr Aliyev to complete the capture of Nagorno-Karabakh despite a peace deal imposed by Russia after a 2020 war.
“Azerbaijan is one of the big winners of the war in Ukraine and, aside from Ukraine, Armenia is one of the biggest losers,” he said.
The demarcation process that Mr Pashinyan is now trying to sell to Armenians is supposed to fix the border, twisted by conflict and ethnic cleansing by both sides since the late 1980s, but most Armenians said they felt humiliated and don’t believe that Azerbaijan will keep to its side of the bargain to give up Armenian territory that it has captured.
In the past week, police in Yerevan have arrested dozens of people protesting against the land handover. Levon, an off-duty taxi driver smoking a cigarette on a street in the Armenian capital, rolled his eyes when asked about the deal and explained the deep-rooted distrust.
“You give them this much, and then they take this much,” he said, first holding his thumb and finger close together and then moving his hands apart.
