The hope was that the procession would be joined by thousands of people when it arrived in Yerevan on Thursday, May 9. Five days earlier, some 500 Armenians began a march across the country to the capital protesting their government’s territorial concessions to Azerbaijan, which began on April 23, with the historic process of demarcating the border between these two former Soviet republics.

Armenia’s Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan has agreed to hand over to his neighbor four areas surrounding border villages in the Tavouch region. These were seized by Yerevan’s forces after the first war in Nagorno-Karabakh (1988-1994), forcing their Azerbaijani inhabitants to flee. This border region is of strategic interest to Armenia, particularly due to the road link with Georgia and a Russian gas pipeline.

“This border demarcation process is illegal,” said march leader, Bagrat Galstanian to Le Monde. Galstanian is the archbishop of the Tavouch region affected by these territorial changes. “Our movement [christened ‘Tavouch in the name of the homeland’] began in the affected villages, but, in the long term, the whole of Armenia is threatened.” Noting that the movement “is not religious,” Galstanian has castigated the “unilateral” concessions, pointing out that “the Constitution provides for a referendum in order to modify territory” and condemning the fact that “these concessions were made under threat from Baku.” “When Nikol Pashinyan came to see the villagers two months ago, he told them very clearly: ‘If we don’t go through with this demarcation process, we’ll have another war with Azerbaijan.’ It’s a way of making them take responsibility for a conflict,” he said indignantly.

Yerevan in a weak position

Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev assured at the end of April that a peace agreement with Armenia was “closer than ever.” But fears of a new war remain very strong, fuelled by the armed clashes regularly breaking out on the border. Pashinyan believes that compromises with Baku are necessary to avoid a new conflagration. Armenia finds itself in a particularly weak position, no longer able to count on the help of its traditional ally Russia, which remained passive during the Azerbaijani offensive in Nagorno-Karabakh in September 2023 and is now considered to be a traitor.

Over more than 30 years, Armenia and Azerbaijan have fought three wars for control of the disputed enclave of Nagorno-Karabakh, a place that Armenians regard as the cradle of their homeland. After its victory in the first war, Yerevan suffered a crushing defeat in the second, in the autumn of 2020. The last, following Baku’s lightning offensive in September 2023, led to the loss of Nagorno-Karabakh and forced exodus of the 120,000 or so Armenians living there.

You have 40.01% of this article left to read. The rest is for subscribers only.