"The Lachine corridor should be opened,” Toivo Klaar, the EU’s special envoy to the South Caucasus, told Alphanews.am late on Tuesday. “At the same time, I think that every offer should also be used, not as an alternative to Lachine but as a complement to it.”
Azerbaijani officials have made the offer while dismissing international calls to lift the blockade and denying a humanitarian crisis in Karabakh despite severe shortages of food, medicine, fuel and other essential items there. They say that the region can be supplied with basic necessities from Azerbaijan proper and the town of Aghdam in particular.
Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev apparently insisted on this idea during his trilateral meeting with Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinian and EU head Charles Michel held in Brussels on July 15. Michel said after the talks that as well as urging Aliyev to reopen the Lachin corridor he “noted Azerbaijan’s willingness to equally provide humanitarian supplies via Aghdam.”
“I see both options as important,” he said, prompting strong criticism from Karabakh’s leadership that regards the Aghdam option as a ploy designed to facilitate the restoration of Azerbaijani control over Karabakh.
“Our position is that there is an international obligation [by Azerbaijan] regarding the unhindered functioning of the Lachin corridor and it must be fulfilled unconditionally,” Artur Harutiunian, a senior Karabakh lawmaker, told RFE/RL’s Armenian Service on Wednesday.
Harutiunian pointed to a Russian-brokered 2020 agreement that committed Baku to ensuring unfettered commercial traffic through the sole road connecting Karabakh to Armenia.
“For some reason, European officials keep talking about humanitarian aid,” he complained. “They seem to think that the people of Artsakh should only live off humanitarian supplies and are looking for some alternative arrangements for that.”
Several non-governmental organizations based in Stepanakert also denounced Michel’s remarks. “Assistance to people facing a humanitarian catastrophe cannot come at the expense of their dignity from a country that can offer them nothing but hatred, suffering and pain,” they said in a joint statement.
Many ordinary Karabakh Armenians appear to back this stance despite the fact that one month after the tightening of the Azerbaijani blockade there is virtually nothing they can now buy in local food stores apart from limited quantities of bread.
“No way, only the lifeline road to Armenia,” a resident of the village of Khramort said when asked about the possibility of accepting food supplies from Azerbaijan.
Khramort has about 220 residents. It now receives only 35 loaves of bread each day.
“They [the Azerbaijanis] only want a Karabakh without Armenians,” said Janik Petrosian, a schoolteacher who fled another village that was seized by Azerbaijani forces during the 2020 war.
On Tuesday, a group of local activists placed concrete barriers on a Karabakh road leading to Aghdam. They also put a banner reading “The road to death.”
It remains unclear how Pashinian reacted to the Azerbaijani proposal during his weekend talks with Aliyev. The Armenian government’s press office has not commented on that so far.
The Armenian premier sparked uproar in Stepanakert and Yerevan in May when he effectively recognized Azerbaijani sovereignty over Karabakh. He regularly calls for an internationally mediated dialogue between Baku and Stepanakert on “the rights and security” of Karabakh’s population. His critics counter that no security guarantees can convince the Karabakh Armenians to live under Azerbaijani rule.