Two years ago, 13-year-old singer Maléna was rehearsing for Eurovision Junior when war broke out. While her rivals battled in Warsaw on stage, she stayed home in Armenia. Young men picked up AK-47s to fight against their Azerbaijani neighbours in the disputed region of Nagorno-Karabakh. More than 4,000 never returned.
A year later, Maléna re-entered Eurovision Junior and won, giving her country the right to host Eurovision Junior in December 2022. Armenian authorities staged celebrations in the capital, Yerevan. Crowds huddled around outdoor televisions in the central square to watch the show.
A group of young musicians from Nagorno-Karabakh joined the party in Yerevan, coming into the capital on the only road that links the capital to the breakaway region. They had a few changes of clothes and their instruments. But, as cleaners swept up streamers and confetti the next morning, the musicians were told their way home had been closed off. Self-described Azerbaijani environmental activists had pushed past the wire fencing around the road – called the Lachin Corridor – and set up camp on the highway. The Russian peacekeepers tasked with guarding the route watched on. Motorists were told to turn around and go back the way they came. Nobody knew when they would be able to go home.
What started as a minor disruption has now become a blockade. The Azerbaijani demonstrators, most with no record of eco-activism, say they won’t leave until their demands are met. They accuse the Karabakh Armenians of using the road to steal gold extracted from illegal mines that poison the environment. They say their border is being run by Russian soldiers and its territory held by armed separatists. The miners are smuggling in landmines for the Armenian war too. What other country has to put up with that, they ask.
Almost everyone in Nagorno-Karabakh, inside Azerbaijan’s internationally-recognised borders, is familiar with the sound of bombs and bullets. Hundreds of thousands of Azerbaijanis were displaced in the fighting of the 1990s, with countless children growing up in refugee camps, army barracks or cattle cars; many inevitably became soldiers themselves. Their country is now intent on retaking what it sees as its rightful territory and repatriating those who were forced to leave.
The Azerbaijani government says that the road isn’t under blockade, and tells me it is prepared to guarantee the children’s safe passage
For more than three weeks, the group of young musicians has been stranded in the border city of Goris, unable to get back. At a hotel on the hillside, its gardens filled with bedsheets drying on washing lines, they spend their evenings playing traditional music and singing songs from home.
‘Our parents miss us of course,’ says Artur, a 17-year-old clarinet player who, along with his friends, spent Christmas and New Year away from home for the first time. ‘We’re being looked after here though. And the food is good,’ he adds, pointing to a plate of soft cheese, salad and flatbreads on the table.
Across the mountains on the horizon, their families in Nagorno-Karabakh aren’t as lucky. Nearly all supply trucks and civilian vehicles have been prevented from entering for a month. The shelves are bare in the region’s de facto capital, Stepanakert. There is no fresh fruit or vegetables, and locals say they are surviving on whatever pickles, meat, eggs and milk they can find from nearby farms.
Azerbaijan insists that humanitarian convoys from the Red Cross are getting through the blockade. Armenian officials, though, warn this isn’t nearly enough to supply the 100,000 people living there. There is a risk of famine. Prime minister Nikol Pashinyan claims the Azerbaijanis are planning a ‘genocide’ to force out the region’s ethnic Armenians.
Dr Biayna Sukhudyan is a paediatric neurologist from Yerevan. She travelled to Stepanakert to treat young patients and got trapped there by the blockade. ‘We are running dangerously low on medicine for children with epilepsy,’ she tells The Spectator. ‘We had several patients who needed specialised antibiotics, and these were nearly impossible to find. Families are sharing medication between each other based on who has what.’
‘We haven’t started to see children with malnutrition yet,’ she says, ‘but I expect we will soon. Baby formula is almost entirely unavailable and, this is a sensitive subject, but breastfeeding mothers are feeding the children of those who can’t.’
Trust on both sides is at an all-time low. Asked why nothing can be done to reunite the stranded children with their families, the Azerbaijani government maintains that the road isn’t under blockade. It insists it is prepared to guarantee the children’s safe passage.
‘Because lots of false information is being spread about us, this was the answer less expected by the international audience, but we are ready to help and to provide the secure corridor to these children,’ one senior official says. The Red Cross, which has already transported a dozen critically ill patients from Stepanakert to Yerevan, tells me it ‘stands ready to continue to facilitate the process’ but says that it needs directions from both sides before it can act.
With the humanitarian crisis worsening, Armenians are also blaming Russian peacekeepers who are either unable or unwilling to clear the road. Distracted by its increasingly catastrophic war in Ukraine, Moscow’s old sphere of influence is collapsing and pressure is growing on the West to take action.
‘A dangerous vacuum has opened up in the South Caucasus as the Azeri regime takes advantage of Russia’s inability to act as a peacekeeper in this highly unstable area,’ Conservative MP Tim Loughton, a former children’s minister, tells The Spectator. ‘The fact that so many women and children are in the frontline of the suffering this is causing shows how the Azeri dictatorship has no regard for human rights or international protocols and cannot be trusted.’
Baku, however, insists they’re the ones under attack. ‘Azerbaijan was suffering from aggression for 30 years,’ an official says. ‘After all these tragedies, we still promote peace and prove it with actions. Armenia needs to make a step forward, sign the peace deal and let the region prosper.’
The Karabakh Armenians fear that Azerbaijan taking over the Lachin Corridor means they will be forced out of their homes. Or worse. ‘In a year, I’ll be 18,’ says Artur, the 17-year-old clarinet player stranded away from his family. ‘Then, like everyone else, I’ll join the army and defend my home.’
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