US envoy arrives in Armenia amid fears of ethnic cleansing in Nagorno-Karabakh

Senior U.S. officials arrived in Armenia on Monday after neighboring Azerbaijan launched a full-scale military assault last week in the mountainous Nagorno-Karabakh region and forced the evacuation of thousands of ethnic Armenians.

Samantha Power, the administrator of the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID), is in Armenia along with State Department acting assistant secretary for Europe and Eurasian Affairs Yuri Kim.

The Biden administration officials are there to “affirm U.S. support for Armenia’s sovereignty, independence, territorial integrity, and democracy and to help address humanitarian needs stemming from the recent violence in Nagorno-Karabakh,” according to a USAID statement.

Azerbaijan’s military campaign in the Nagorno-Karabakh region lasted just 24 hours, with forces quickly ousting separatist opposition in a lightning blitz.

The battle resulted in a ceasefire that gave full control of the region to Azerbaijan’s forces after the de facto independent government, called the Republic of Artsakh, appears to have completely surrendered to Baku.

The Karbakh region is internationally recognized as part of Azerbaijan but was operated for years under the Republic of Artsakh.

Last week’s offensive means Baku reclaimed the region from roughly three decades of separatist control and has now begun what it calls a “re-integration” of the region, which has led thousands of ethnic Armenians to begin fleeing the country.

Azerbaijan authorities say they will respect the rights of Armenians, but Armenia has warned of an ethnic cleansing after decades of tensions and violent conflict between the two countries.

Secretary of State Antony Blinken spoke with Armenia’s Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan over the weekend and expressed “deep concern” about potential violations of Armenian human rights, according to a readout of the call.

Blinken also spoke with Azerbaijan’s President Ilham Aliyev and urged him to deescalate the situation through dialogue and to halt any remaining military action.

President Biden sent a letter to Armenia’s Pashinyan over the weekend, expressing his condolences for the loss of life and underscoring his commitment to “stand by Armenia” and address human rights and uphold the sovereignty of Yerevan.

The Armenian National Committee of America, however, called that letter an “absolutely heartless condolence card to Armenians still burying their dead” in a post on X, the platform previously known as Twitter.

The committee has blamed the U.S. for arming Azerbaijan and said Washington is “complicit in the ethnic-cleansing.”

Nagorno-Karabakh is a region in the South Caucasus, located in east Europe and West Asia, that has been disputed between Armenia and Azerbaijan since the early 20th Century.

When the Soviet Union began to break up toward the end of the 1980s, the nations fought a war that ended with a 1994 agreement giving control of most of the region to Armenia.

Azerbaijan took back swaths of Nagorno-Karabakh in 2020 and with last week’s assault, has now assumed full control.

Russia, which has deployed peacekeepers to the region since 2020 to protect Armenians, particularly in a corridor that connects to Armenia, mediated the ceasefire last week and is urging the normalization of relations in Karabkh.

Yerevan has accused Moscow of failing to keep the peace and has said Russia has been too consumed by the war in Ukraine.

The United Nations has expressed concern about the recent clash and human rights violations, but not all countries are showing alarm. Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, an ally of Azerbaijan, met with Baku’s President Aliyev on Monday in an apparent show of support.