Armenia said on Thursday that it wanted to resort to the UN to prevent a "
genocide
" of the Armenians of the Nagorno-Karabakh enclave that it disputes with Azerbaijan, accusing the Russian peacekeepers of not fulfilling their role.
Yerevan accuses Baku of blocking the only road linking Nagorno-Karabakh to Armenia for weeks, causing a humanitarian crisis, to launch “
ethnic cleansing of Armenians
”.
Baku denies these accusations.
"
Azerbaijan's military and political leaders are planning ethnic cleansing and genocide of the people of Nagorno-Karabakh
," Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinian said Thursday at a government meeting.
"
Russian peacekeepers are guarantors of the security of the people of Karabakh and if they cannot provide it, they themselves must turn to the UN Security Council to prevent a genocide
,” he said.
Nikol Pashinian said he ordered the head of Armenian diplomacy Ararat Mirzoyan to launch “
international mechanisms to prevent genocide, in particular within the framework of the UN
”.
Mr. Mirzoyan is responsible for "
beginning negotiations with the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (Filippo Grandi - Editor's note) on the return of Armenians to the territories of Karabakh occupied by Azerbaijan and neighboring regions",
indicated the Prime Minister.
Criticism of the role of Russia
Mountainous region mainly populated by Armenians and having seceded from Azerbaijan at the collapse of the Soviet Union, Nagorno-Karabakh continues to poison relations between Yerevan and Baku.
The first conflict, at the beginning of the 1990s at the time of the dismantling of the USSR, which caused 30,000 deaths, ended in an Armenian victory with the support of Moscow.
But Azerbaijan took its revenge in the fall of 2020 during a second war, which left 6,500 dead and allowed it to retake many territories.
Despite the presence of Russian soldiers, clashes in Karabakh and on the Azerbaijani-Armenian border remain frequent and threaten to derail the fragile truce concluded after the 2020 war. On Wednesday, Baku accused Yerevan of having fired on its positions at the border between the two Caucasus countries and in the Nagorno-Karabakh region.
Armenia is increasingly critical of the role of Russia, its traditional ally, a test of regional influence for Moscow mired in its invasion of Ukraine.