The Kremlin Instigates Separatism in Azerbaijan towards the Crimean Scenario

Constant military defeats in Ukraine are pushing Russian special services to consider options for globalizing the conflict and creating new "pressure points". According to its old plan, in December 2022 Moscow was striving to recreate the "USSR" project, to add to this new formation Belarus and several unrecognized enclaves that were created Russian Federation’s support after the collapse of the Soviet Union. The concept of "USSR-2" failed, but Kremlin still desires to annex territories. One of the contenders for the annexation is Karabakh, where the calls for an alliance with the Russian Federation and obtaining Russian passports are sound.

The Kremlin’s appointee in charge of the Armenian separatist enclave in the area controlled by the Russian military forces in Azerbaijani Karabakh, publicizes forged data on the quantity of the "sponsored" population. Putin used the same arguments to justify the annexation of the Ukrainian territories. And now the Kremlin’s envoy and his patrons from Moscow exaggerate the size of the separatist enclave’s population threefold, while in fact the number does not exceed 40,000 people.

The Kremlin-appointed leader of the Armenian separatist enclave in Azerbaijani Karabakh, the former member of the RF’s presidential and government "expert councils" Vardanyan claims that as the result of the protests of Azerbaijani environmental activists "the lives of over 120 thousand" of Karabakh Armenians were "on the brink of a humanitarian crisis".

The environmental activists started their peaceful protest on December 12th 2022 near the Azerbaijani town of Shusha, through which the highway to Armenia from the city of Khankendi, populated by Karabakh Armenians, goes. The environmental activists protest the mining of gold deposits in Azerbaijani territory controlled by the Russian military forces. The Azerbaijani activists set no barriers to the passage of either civilian vehicles or humanitarian convoys. However, the separatist regime in Karabakh artificially creates food shortages to make the situation look like a "humanitarian crisis" and blame Azerbaijan. On December 20th 2022Vardanyan said, "The worse our situation becomes, the better the global reach of our demands and our voice will be". To produce the impression of a mass-scale "humanitarian crisis", the appointee of the Kremlin, his Moscow patrons and cronies emphasize that the number of Armenians in Karabakh, in the area controlled by Russian military forces, allegedly exceeds 120,000 people.

Figure-based Propaganda Technologies Inspired by Putin’s Patterns

Vardanyan cites the figure of 120,000 (people) in almost every speech or statement. "120,000 people are facing a humanitarian crisis", he noted on December 22th 2022 in his address to the Spanish Parliament. Vardanyan also mentioned "120,000 Armenians" on December 29th 2022 in his interview to Novaya Gazeta Europe.

On December 20th 2022, the First Deputy Chairman of the State Duma Committee on CIS Affairs, Eurasian Integration, and Relations with Compatriots Zatulin also mentioned on the air of the propagandistic Russian First Channel "120,000 people who stay in Nagorno-Karabakh".

Repetitions of the figure by the Kremlin’s appointee and his Moscow patrons are in line with the pattern used by Putin for justification of the annexations of Crimea, Donbas, Zaporizhzhia and Kherson Regions of Ukraine. In all his statements on the subject, the Kremlin dictator voiced out the same "figure":

• On the annexation of Crimea (March 18th 2014): "Millions of Russian people live in Crimea".

• On recognition of Donbas separatist enclaves (February 24th 2022): "It is necessary to immediately stop this nightmare – the genocide against the millions of people living there".

• On annexation of the territories in the east of Ukraine (September 30th 2022): "… there is nothing stronger than the commitment of the millions of people who… believe they are a part of Russia".

Demographics in Service of Separatism

As per the official data of the previous leaders of separatists (Vardanyan came to power in November 2022), in 2017 the population of the enclave within its former borders, including the seven occupied districts of Azerbaijan (later liberated as the result of the war of 2020), amounted to 147,000 people.However, an employee of the catholic foundation Aiuto alla Chiesa che soffre (ACS) who was on a mission to collect data on refugees in Karabakh in 2021, stated that the real number of the Armenian population there amounted before the war to about 103,000 people. He claims that the separatist leaders exaggerated the number of the enclave’s population by approximately 30%. They did so to conceal the permanent migration to Armenia and the Russian Federation resulting from the tough socio-economic situation and corruption. Besides, the enclave’s authorities used the inflated demographic data to justify the claims of 20% of the sovereign territory of Azerbaijan, occupied with the help of Russian military forces in 1991−1993. To "compensate" for the outflow of the population, Armenian refugees from Syria were allocated to the seized lands.

As reported by the Office of the UN High Commissioner for Refugees, 91,000 Karabakh Armenians moved to Armenia as the result of the war, which ended on November 10th 2020. While the data of the Vatican collected in Karabakh in October 2021 by the ACS Foundation mission, shows that only about 25,000 of the 91,000 returned after the war. In 2022, there were no reports of mass-scale return of Armenians to Karabakh, even from the separatist leaders. Thus, the actual number of the Karabakh Armenian enclave population is no more than 40,000 (103,000 — 91,000 + 25,000). Therefore, the separatists and their Moscow patrons exaggerate threefold the number of Armenians in the area controlled by the Russian military forces.

Our contact in the ACS clarified that the absolute majority ofreturnees are those who used to live in settlements, which have come under the control of the Russian military forces as the result of the war. While no Armenians have returned to the areas, of which Azerbaijan resumed control after the war, though, after the end of the military confrontation many of them came to collect their belongings and then completely resettled to Armenia. But the authorities of the separatist enclave and Russian military commanders still include them in the data on the de facto population in the area controlled by the Russians. They do so in order to "inflate" the demographics of the separatist enclave. Thus, in February 2021, the Russian Ministry of Defense stated that 52,712 Armenians had returned to Karabakh, while the reports of the catholic foundation ACS show that even by the end of 2021 the number of the returnees did not exceed 25,000.

The data on the number of the Armenian population in the Karabakh area under the Russian control have been falsified not only to blame Azerbaijan for the "massive humanitarian crisis". The Kremlin uses separatism in the territories of Ukraine and Azerbaijan in a similar way, in order to enhance the expansion in the respective regions and retain military lodgmentareas in the adjacent countries. In both cases, Russians applysimilar techniques to instigate separatism and use it for its own purposes.

The Plans of Annexation in Line with the Crimea Pattern

Upon the beginning of the full-fledged aggression against Ukraine, the Armenian separatists of Karabakh along with the politicians of the neighboring Armenia, started to raise their voices in favor of enhancement of the Russian military forces, their indefinite presence in the region and holding a referendum on joining the RF. They did not even conceal that they view the annexation of Crimea as a pattern.

On March 18th 2022, a former head of the Armenian National Assembly delegation to the OSCE Parliamentary Assembly Geghamyan said, "A referendum on one of the issues of the agenda, concerning the accession to Russia, should be held in Artsakh, like it was done in Crimea eight years ago".

On March 25th 2022, the "Security Council" of the separatist enclave approved an appeal to the Kremlin dictator to "reconsider the current number of Russian peacekeepers and the number of facilities in their disposal, and, accordingly, to increase the number of military personnel and military equipment" in Azerbaijani Karabakh.

On March 31st 2022, Barseghyan, a former leader of the Askeran district of Karabakh, called on the separatist authorities "to organize, as soon as possible, a national referendum on Artsakh's accession to the Russian Federation". On April 62022, the Armenian newspaper Hrapark quoted a well-informed source in Khankendi (the administrative center of the Armenian enclave): "If Armenia washes its hands of Artsakh and recognizes the territorial integrity of Azerbaijan, we will have no choice but to accede to Russia. This is why we will start collecting signatures". On April 8th 2022, during a rally in Yerevan's Victory Park to support the RF’s aggression against Ukraine, Hambardzumyan, a former acting director of the Armenian National Security Service, said, "Artsakh has started collecting signatures in the hope of collecting enough to raise the issue of becoming a part of Russia".

On April 12th 2022, Arutyunyan, the "president" of the separatists said that "the Armenian enclave in Karabakh "may have some direct vertical relations with Russia". He noted in this respect that the military involvement of the Russian Federation "must be guaranteed and indefinite, with a corresponding increase of the quantities of servicemen and military equipment".

On April 14th 2022, the former Armenian Prime Minister Bagratyan stated, "Artsakh intends to become a part of Russia".He viewed as positive that "Artsakh and Russia have vertical relations". The next day, reserve colonel Nahapetyan noted on the air of the Armenian Live News channel that the only way for the separatist enclave to ensure its security is to become a part of Russia. He mentioned the mass-scale acquisition of Russian passports by the Armenian population of Karabakh as one of the ways to achieve the goal, in line with the pattern tested upon the annexation of Crimea and the occupation of Donbas. Nahapetyan explained explicitly that Karabakh Armenians should apply "to the Russian Embassy in Armenia for Russian citizenship. I.e., they would have a dual citizenship — of Russia and of Armenia. And thus, we have unrecognized, but quite real territory populated by citizens of the Russian Federation. So, Russia is given not only the moral but also the legal right to interfere with the process".

On May 10th 2022, a former head of the Armenian National Assembly delegation to the OSCE Parliamentary Assembly Geghamyan said, "The Republic of Artsakh must officially apply to the authorities of the Russian Federation to become a part of the Russian Federation. The way it was in Crimea in 2014."

Many Ukrainian experts compare the events in Karabakh with Russian claims to Ukraine. Over the past 30 years the Azerbaijani side has been preparing to liberate the occupied territories, strengthened its armed forces, and built regional alliances. Their opponents hoped for Russian protection. As it turned out, the security guarantees from the Kremlin did not work. The presence of the Russian contingent in Armenia and the membership of this country in the CSTO did not become a factor of military security. But the situation is developing, and various signals indicate the likelihood of the use of hybrid methods of warfare by the Russian Federation, including attempts to hold a pseudo-referendum, distribute Russian passports and then a military operation under the pretext of solving humanitarian problem.