Eurasia Review (30 October 2023)

Dr. Taras KUZIO

Azerbaijan launched a military assault on Armenian-controlled Karabakh not with the goals of genocide or committing ethnic cleansing, two common accusations in the Western media, but because it had exhausted other avenues. Azerbaijan resorted to military means after three years of Armenia dragging its heels on signing a peace treaty that accepted the Karabakh region is part of Azerbaijan, Russian obstruction, and Western negotiators taking a late interest in the South Caucasus only after Russia invaded Ukraine.

Armenians living in Karabakh were given the opportunity to remain and become citizens of Azerbaijan. This was the same offer given after the USSR disintegrated to millions living in other Soviet republics in January 1992. In Ukraine, some Russians, Jews, Poles, and other national minorities remained while others moved to other former Soviet republics or emigrated to Israel and Poland.

Contrary to Western media reports, the United Nations recorded no instances of human rights abuses of the Armenian minority.  Azerbaijan’s military operation is very different to the early 1990s when three quarter of a million Azerbaijani’s were ethnically cleansed from Armenia and occupied Azerbaijani lands.

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