The gas supply from Armenia to Artsakh was restored on Friday but Azerbaijan’s blockade of the Lachin Corridor—the only road connecting Artsakh to Armenia—entered its fifth day, with Baku showing no signs of letting up, despite mounting international pressure.
Azerbaijan cut off the gas supply to Artsakh on Tuesday, a day after a group of Azerbaijanis posing as environmental activists blocked the Lachin Corridor, creating a standoff on the road and choking supplies to Artsakh.
More than 1,000 people remain stranded on the road. The gas cutoff forced Artsakh authorities to impose martial law and ration supplies.
“The neighboring state [Azerbaijan] restored our gas supply without imposing any precondition, without any concessions,” Artsakh State Minister Ruben Vardanyan said in a Facebook Live message on Friday morning.
“This is truly our victory because we are strong, we showed that we are not going to leave Artsakh and we are not going to panic,” Vardanyan added.
Azatutyun.am reported that lines of cars, running on liquefied or pressurized natural gas, formed outside local filling stations which all but stopped selling fuel on Wednesday due to fuel rationing introduced by the authorities.
Later on Friday, Vardanyan announced that a rally will be held in Stepanakert on Sunday. Earlier this fall another such event was held in the Artsakh capital, where more than 40,000 people rallied in support of their rights and freedoms, when it was speculated that Armenian authorities were going sign an agreement with Azerbaijan that would have left Artsakh under Baku’s rule.
Artsakh Acting Foreign Minister, David Babayan, who is stranded in Yerevan due to the Lachin Corridor blockade, said on Friday that the Russian peacekeepers in Artsakh should also be granted the mandate to impose peace.
“If it weren’t for the Russian peacekeeping mission, Artsakh have been destroyed a long time ago,” Babayan told reporters. “On the other hand we are seeing that peacekeeping mission must be strengthened, in line with their mandate.”
One suggestion offered by Babayan was to increase the number of Russian troops stationed in Artsakh, saying the almost 2,000 soldiers currently in Artsakh are not able to fulfill their mission.
“In the Shushi section there are only a few peacekeepers deployed. Therefore first of all the number must be increased. Second, they must receive an international mandate. This would mean that along with a peacekeeping mission they must have the authority to impose peace, like it happened in Kosovo or Bosnia. The peacekeeper is standing there, and if some group of people is approaching they are warned not to approach, if they continue doing so then force can be used,” Babayan explained.
He said the Russian peacekeepers do not have that authority and that’s why an international mandate must be issued.
“The democratic community should not tolerate the destruction of an unrecognized democratic state by a totalitarian country. Thus, everyone must set aside their geopolitical differences and act so that genocide does not occur. And this is possible only with issuing that mandate,” Babayan said.
He also touched on recent Azerbaijani demands that customs check points be installed along the Lachin Corridor, saying that option is “out of the question.”
Explaining that the November 9, 2020 statement did not envision such a mechanism, adding that the Russian peacekeepers are already responsible to ensure the flow of traffic through the Lachin Corridor.
“That would not be a customs checkpoint for Artsakh, but rather a checkpoint for being dragged to prison, because they [the Azerbaijani] would take everyone,” said Babayan. “That checkpoint would grossly violate the essence of the agreement. The [November 9, 2020] agreement is a difficult one, but it must be strictly enforced.”
