Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinian has warned that the humanitarian situation in the breakaway region of Nagorno-Karabakh has become precarious as groups of protesters continue to block the Lachin Corridor.
The route is the only land connection across Azerbaijani territory between Armenia and the Nagorno-Karabakh region, and shops and businesses in Yerevan and Stepanakert are beginning to feel the effects after more than a week without deliveries.
"The situation is extremely tense as a result of the illegal blockade by Azerbaijan of the Lachin Corridor," Pahsinian said during a cabinet meeting on December 22., adding he had made a proposal to Azerbaijan to end the standoff.
Armenia has accused Azerbaijan of dispatching the protesters in an attempt to block Armenia's access to the region. Baku denies this.
Karabakh imports items such as cooking oil, dairy products, rice, and virtually all medicines. These and other imports ground to a halt on December 12 after the Azerbaijanis, posing as environmental activists, blocked the corridor, making ecology-related demands.
Inside Stepanakert As Azerbaijani Blockade Continues
According to Azerbaijani media, the protesters’ new demand is that Baku establish control over the Lachin Corridor.
Protesters have been blocking the road in a peaceful standoff with Russian troops who belong to a 5,000-strong mission deployed to the region after Armenia and Azerbaijan fought a war in 2020.
Pahsinian scolded Moscow for "not fulfilling the obligation assumed" by Russia as part of the cease-fire deal reached to stop the fighting.
He called on the United Nations or the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) to send a fact-finding mission to the region to clarify and help resolve the situation.
Armenia and Azerbaijan have been locked in a conflict over Nagorno-Karabakh for years. Some 30,000 people were killed in a war in the early 1990s that left ethnic Armenians in control of the breakaway region and seven adjacent districts of Azerbaijan proper.
Nagorno-Karabakh is internationally recognized as part of Azerbaijan.