The flow of gas through a pipeline passing through Azerbaijani-controlled territory has been regularly disrupted during Azerbaijan’s eight-month blockade of Karabakh’s only land link with Armenia and the outside world. According to officials in Stepanakert, it resumed on Saturday for the first time in more than three months but stopped shortly afterwards.
Azerbaijani officials made no statements on the latest disruption which came three weeks after Baku banned emergency supplies of food, fuel and other essential items to Karabakh carried out by Russian peacekeepers.
A senior Karabakh official, Artak Beglarian, accused Baku of seeking to “induce a sense of uncertainty and helplessness” among the Karabakh Armenians.
“The authorities of Azerbaijan must realize that they cannot take away our natural rights from us and break our will and spirit of freedom with gas, electricity, fuel, food and other household deprivations,” he wrote on Facebook.
Beglarian called on the international community to take “urgent and practical measures” to prevent a further worsening of the humanitarian crisis in Karabakh.
“A day that began with promise again ended in disappointment and frustration,” Toivo Klaar, the European Union’s special envoy for the South Caucasus, tweeted on Sunday. “As reiterated many times by the EU, it is crucial that the flow of energy supplies be restored without restrictions, as well as the movement of people and goods via the Lachin corridor.”
The United States and Russia have also repeatedly called for an end to the blockade. Azerbaijan has dismissed such appeals.
Nagorno-Karabakh - Customers visit an almost empty food store in Stepanakert, January 7, 2023.
With most vehicles in Karabakh powered by pressurized natural gas, the blockage of gas supplies has also disrupted public transport. Bus services between Stepanakert and other Karabakh towns and villages were seriously curtailed last week due to the fuel shortages.
Ashkhen Grigorian, a resident of the village of Machkalashen, complained on Monday the only realistic way to get to Stepanakert from her community now is a single minibus that runs twice a week and is too small to accommodate all local travelers.
“We ride it if we manage to get in and stand there on one foot,” she told RFE/RL’s Armenian Service.
Karabakh is also running out of key foodstuffs which the Russian peacekeepers shipped from Armenia in limited quantities until the June 15 tightening of the blockade.
“There is no fruit, vegetables, cooking oil and sugar at all,” said Anahit Tonian, a resident of another Karabakh village. “The shops sell only limited amounts of rise, buckwheat and macaroni.”
“We grow cucumbers and tomatoes in our garden and get by that way,” added Tonian.