Last week, Vardan Tadevosyan remained the health minister of a small, unrecognized republic in the mountains of the South Caucasus, overseeing dozens of government employees and running one of the region’s busiest medical facilities. .
But within 24 hours, the government of Nagorno-Karabakh ceased to exist. Soon, Tadevosyan’s employees began leaving the office. Patients vacated hospital beds; doctors and nurses disappeared. There were not many police left and the streets were starting to become unsafe.
Only the road out of the region’s capital, Stepanakert, was busy – Azerbaijan recaptured the breakaway enclave by force last week in a brief but bloody war that saw tens of thousands of Armenians flee the city , which was crowded with Armenians fleeing the city. According to local officials, about 200 people died; the injured were quickly rushed to the Armenian capital Yerevan.
“We have no more troops, we have no police, no state… In two days there will be only ghosts around. The city will be completely deserted,” said Tadevosyan, who founded the medical center 25 years ago. Said over the phone.
He came to the center to pack up equipment. “Almost all my employees are already on the road,” he said. “Only a few people are still here, but everyone wants to leave.”
The empty streets in Stepanakert mark a tragedy for Armenia, a country that considers the mountainous region its ancestral heartland, a fact strongly disputed by oil-rich neighbor Azerbaijan, which also has ties to the region. Historical origins.
It also marks an abrupt and brutal end to one of the most bitter land disputes sparked by the collapse of the Soviet Union that has dogged the region for decades. The internationally recognized territory of Azerbaijan has been described as a textbook “frozen” conflict that allows Russia to continue its role as a power broker in what it calls its “neighborhood.”
But as Armenia recovers from the events of the past week, Russia’s control of the country appears to have been irreparably damaged. Moscow has long been seen as an important ally and security guarantor of Armenia. Armenians hope it will maintain the status quo and prevent Karabakh from being annexed to Azerbaijan.
“Our hopes are pinned on the Russians, they are our brothers. Why did they allow the Azerbaijanis to treat us like this?” said a former shopkeeper in the village who sent her 85-year-old mother, who was thin and wizened, after traveling from Karabakh. Go to the hospital. Both women lost a son in Karabakh’s many wars.
The hospital’s wards in Goris, southern Armenia, are packed with families who fled and are now recovering from their arduous journey. So far, more than 70,000 people, more than half of Karabakh’s population, have left.
A woman who spent two nights with her daughter, who has cerebral palsy, in a long queue of cars on a winding road from Karabakh was struck by a seizure when her 12-year-old daughter suffered a seizure. Put her on the ground.
Another took her husband to the hospital. He suffered a minor stroke after crossing a checkpoint set up by Azerbaijan.
Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan publicly criticized Russia last week and questioned the work of the 2,000 Russian soldiers deployed since 2020 to maintain peace in Karabakh.
Pashinyan told Armenians that “the security system and allies on which we have relied for many years” are “ineffective” and that the “means of the Armenian-Russian strategic partnership” are “insufficient to ensure Armenia’s external security.”
It marks a historic shift in the country’s foreign policy and, for Moscow, the loss of one of its oldest allies. The Kremlin said “we are convinced that the Armenian leadership is making a huge mistake” and denounced Pashinyan in local media for his “distancing himself from Russia” and his “crazy anti-Russian campaign.”
As protests erupted in Yerevan over the loss of Karabakh, some Armenians expressed concern that Russia could fuel the demonstrations, pressure Pashinyan or even topple him, a claim the Kremlin quickly denied.
However, Richard Giragosian, director of the Center for Regional Studies, a Yerevan think tank, said Russia was distracted by the tense war in Ukraine and was unlikely to step in, as it is known to do when other countries veer off its course.
“Yes, Moscow is angry with Yerevan. But Moscow is angrier, and Baku’s challenge is greater,” Gilagosian said. He said the capture of Nagorno-Karabakh exposed “Russia’s vulnerability to Azerbaijan’s use of force” and furthered “the ongoing erosion of Russia’s position and the slow demise of the ‘myth of Russian military power'”.
With Armenian public anger over the loss of Karabakh directed more towards Russia, the breakaway region’s elites and Western inaction, Pashinyan’s position appears to be secure, Giragosian said.
However, concerns remain that Azerbaijan’s ambitions could extend beyond Karabakh, which it first lost to Armenia in a war in the 1990s, and into southern Armenia.
Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev recently described the region as “western Azerbaijan,” although the two countries are also holding peace talks in which they are expected to recognize each other’s territorial integrity. “We have no claim to their territory,” Azerbaijan’s ambassador to the UK Irene Suleymanov told the Financial Times.
Locals say Azerbaijani security services have yet to enter Stepanakert as the evacuation from Karabakh continues. But for the first time, border guards arrested a member of the Karabakh elite. On Thursday, another man decided to turn himself in and travel to Azerbaijan.
The disarmament process is underway and Karabakh soldiers are handing over weapons to Azerbaijan at a Russian peacekeeping base.
Suleymanov said the process was taking place peacefully. He rejected the concept of ethnic cleansing, saying people left voluntarily, and while he acknowledged they could be deported out of fear, he said they were victims of manufactured hysteria.
He described the area as having returned to “normal” after the fighting, with aid arriving, field kitchens built and Azerbaijani doctors soon to be sent to work in local hospitals.
Armenians fleeing Karabakh see things differently.
“It was chaos, an anthill. “Everyone was panicking and running around,” said a 50-year-old teacher at Goris Hospital, holding his two-month-old granddaughter. As they hide underground from Azerbaijan’s offensive, a family has been trying to find medical help for their baby’s infection.
The child was saved by a doctor who originally planned to evacuate but chose to remain in the hospital when the child’s condition worsened. On Monday, when nurses began distributing free medical supplies from the hospital, the family decided to take the risk and leave.
Tadevosyan questioned whether he should be called health minister since the republic of Nagorno-Karabakh no longer exists, saying he was frustrated by the “very chaotic” evacuation.
“People just started leaving. No one gave them instructions,” he said. He also plans to leave, but not yet. “I have to be the last one to leave.”
As people struggled to buy gasoline leaving Stepanakert (known as Khankendi in Azerbaijani) on Monday night, a huge explosion occurred at an oil depot, killing more than 100 people and filling the sky with thick black smoke.
Tadevosian said it was a devastating final blow. “The explosion killed everyone morally. We were already devastated. It’s a dramatic, tragic feeling when your country leaves and you lose your homeland.”
Armenia will deal with this historic loss for years to come. “I lost my identity,” Tadevosyan said.
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