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Russian Peacekeepers Unblock Entrance To Their Karabakh Base Amid Armenian Protest


Russian peacekeepers dragging a car of Karabakh Armenian protesters blocking the entrance to their base in Nagorno-Karabakh, August 16, 2023. (Photograph from Artur Osipian’s Facebook account).
Russian peacekeepers dragging a car of Karabakh Armenian protesters blocking the entrance to their base in Nagorno-Karabakh, August 16, 2023. (Photograph from Artur Osipian’s Facebook account).

Russian peacekeepers deployed in Nagorno-Karabakh removed a car of Armenian protesters to unblock the entrance to their military base in the region on Wednesday morning.

A video posted on social media by one of the protesters demanding that the Russians restore free traffic along the Lachin corridor that has now been closed by Azerbaijani forces showed Russian peacekeepers led by a colonel using an armored personnel carrier to threaten a group of Armenians who parked a car in front of the main entrance to their base in Ivanyan (Khojaly).

“Why don’t Russian soldiers remove the Azerbaijani blockade of the Lachin corridor? Is the [Russian] empire trembling before Azerbaijan?” said Artur Osipian, one of the Karabakh protesters, as several Russian servicemen were carrying his car aside by hand.

Osipian, a member of Nagorno-Karabakh’s movement to unblock the Lachin corridor, said their demand was for the Russian peacekeepers, who he said fail to carry out their main duties, to at least guarantee the security of their trip by cars to the Azerbaijani checkpoint in the Lachin corridor to hold a protest there.

The command of the Russian peacekeepers in Nagorno-Karabakh last week refused to provide an escort to the protesters to the bridge over the river Hakari at the border with Armenia.

It said that the terms of the deployment of the Russian military under a trilateral statement signed by the leaders of Russia, Armenia and Azerbaijan in November 2020 to end a six-week war in Nagorno-Karabakh did not provide for the possibility of escorting protesters and ensuring the security of various demonstrations and rallies.

The Russian side did not comment on the incident immediately, but a Russian officer on the video was heard rebuking the protester as he asked him: “Who has paid you for this?”

On the same video, turning to the Russian servicemen, Osipian said: “If you use force against those whom you are supposed to protect from the enemy and do not use force against the enemy, it shows who you are for here.”

Osipian told RFE/RL’s Armenian Service that the protesters later returned to Stepanakert and were planning what to do next.

“There is no other option, we cannot but fight,” he said.

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