Avoiding another war in the former Soviet Union

Oct 30, 2023

Armenian refugees from Nagorno-Karabakh are seen in the center of the town of Goris on October 1, 2023 before being evacuated to various Armenian cities.

Armenian refugees from Nagorno-Karabakh are seen in the center of the town of Goris on October 1, 2023 before being evacuated to various Armenian cities. | Diego Herrera Carcedo/AFP via Getty Images

GEOPOLITICAL TANGLE — For weeks now, there have been warnings that yet another bloody war could break out on the edge of Europe — pushing the U.S. and E.U. further into a geopolitical tangle with Russia. Now, all eyes are on the South Caucasus to see whether a decades-old conflict between Armenia and Azerbaijan can be averted, or if it will be added to the growing list of geopolitical hotspots that require attention from the West.

While the standoff has flown below the radar amid growing tensions between Serbia and Kosovo; as well as war between Russia and Ukraine and Hamas and Israel, the space sandwiched between Russia and Iran has become increasingly tense. Washington and Brussels have laid out clear red lines that have since been crossed. And there’s a growing suspicion that peace isn’t in Moscow’s best interests.

Last month, Azerbaijan launched an offensive to take control of the breakaway region of Nagorno-Karabakh, with thousands of troops and tanks pushing forward under the cover of heavy artillery fire. Within 24 hours, taking heavy casualties on the front lines, the ethnic Armenian authorities had surrendered, effectively ending thirty years of de facto independence since a war that followed the fall of the Soviet Union.

More than 100,000 people were forced to flee their homes with what few possessions they could pack into cars, buses and even open-topped construction trucks. Few think they’ll ever be able to return, despite Azerbaijan’s promises of “reintegration.” And the Armenian government has accused Azerbaijan of carrying out ethnic cleansing in the region, with concerns of more aggression to come.

While the U.S. and E.U. have condemned the use of force, they’ve been unwilling or unable to take a tougher stance. Azerbaijan is a close partner of both critical NATO ally Turkey and of Israel, and has also stepped up exports of natural gas to Europe as part of efforts to wean the continent off Russian fossil fuels. On top of that, Azerbaijan maintains it was only acting to take control of its internationally-recognized territories, and insists that makes it an entirely internal issue.

But concerns have been growing that Azerbaijan could be planning an invasion of Armenia itself to seize a strategically important transport route that would link it up with Turkey — known as the Zangezur Corridor. Armenia’s new ambassador to the E.U, Tigran Balayan has said his country expects the attack “within weeks.”

Now though, both Azerbaijan and Armenia are saying a long-awaited peace deal could be done over the next few months instead. Speaking to POLITICO, Azerbaijani foreign policy chief Hikmet Hajiyev insisted there was no plan for a confrontation and that the corridor project “has lost its attractiveness for us” because of alternative routes through neighboring Iran.

Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan, meanwhile, said last week that a final ceasefire could be signed soon — and unveiled a “Crossroads for Peace” project designed to bolster transport links with Azerbaijan and Turkey.

The move would be a major blow to Russia, which still has troops patrolling Armenia’s closed borders — once the frontier between the Soviet Union and NATO. With talk of peace in our time, Pashinyan has even hinted it might be time to tell Moscow’s military to leave once and for all.

The efforts to secure a diplomatic settlement would also be touted as a win in Washington and Brussels, despite the mass exodus and shattered lives as a result of last month’s war. Behind the scenes, Western diplomats have been fighting to avoid a repeat of the violence and prevent the worst case scenario from coming about.

And, at a time when Russia is reportedly seeking to stretch the West thin between conflicts in the Balkans, the Middle East and in Africa, it would be a rare moment where calmer heads prevailed and chaos could be averted. Only time will tell if that’s the case — but both Armenia and Azerbaijan are, for the moment, optimistic.

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What'd I Miss?

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— White House offers a new strategy for AI: President Joe Biden launched a broad new whole-of-government approach to artificial intelligence today with an executive order that aims to create standards and rules around the technology — and likely sets the White House up for tussles with both Congress and a powerful American industry. The sprawling document takes aim not only at cutting-edge AI models, but a suite of tech-driven issues that Washington and Congress have struggled to address, including algorithmic housing discrimination, cybersecurity and data privacy.

— McConnell goes all out as Ukraine fight fractures GOP: Mitch McConnell is abandoning his typically cautious style when it comes to aiding Ukraine, shrugging off potshots at his leadership and expending political capital for the embattled country despite a painful rift in the party. McConnell is at odds with new Republican Speaker Mike Johnson, who wants to split off Israel aid from Ukraine funding rather than pass a sweeping national security package. And the Senate GOP leader faces brewing discontent within his own conference, which is buzzing over whether to stick with McConnell or side with conservatives who want a strategy change on Ukraine.

Nightly Road to 2024

HALEY’S COMET — Donald Trump continues to hold a commanding lead in Iowa while Nikki Haley has risen to tie with Ron DeSantis for second place in the GOP field, according to an NBC News/Des Moines Register/Mediacom poll released today.

Forty-three percent of likely Republican caucusgoers picked the former president as their first-choice candidate, giving him a 27-point lead that’s up four percentage points since the August Des Moines Register/NBC News/Mediacom Iowa Poll. Former U.N. Ambassador Haley, up 10 percentage points since August, and Florida Gov. DeSantis, down three percentage points, both trail Trump at 16 percent in the poll released about a week ahead of the third GOP debate. Sen. Tim Scott (R-S.C.) follows with 7 percent and former New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie and entrepreneur Vivek Ramaswamy both hold 4 percent.

14TH AMENDMENT UPDATE — A Denver court began hearing arguments today in a lawsuit seeking to bar former President Donald Trump from the state’s 2024 ballot over his role in the Capitol attack on Jan. 6, 2021, reports NBC News.

The trial comes after Colorado Judge Sarah Wallace last week rejected the latest attempt by Trump to toss the lawsuit, which was filed on behalf of six voters in Denver district court last month. The lawsuit argues Trump should be prohibited from running in future elections, citing Section 3 of the 14th Amendment to the Constitution, which states no person may hold office if they “engaged in insurrection or rebellion” after swearing under oath to support and defend the Constitution. The suit alleges Trump violated his oath of office in his efforts to overturn the 2020 election, leading up to the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol.

THE WRITE-IN INCUMBENT — Top New Hampshire Democrats launched a write-in campaign for President Joe Biden today, days after the president passed on putting his name on the primary ballot there, reports POLITICO.

The effort is designed to prevent Biden from suffering an embarrassment in what’s traditionally been the first primary state, after Rep. Dean Phillips of Minnesota last week announced in Concord that he would challenge Biden for the nomination. The write-in campaign is being spearheaded by veteran Democratic operatives and politicians including Jim Demers and Kathy Sullivan, a former state Democratic Party chair. And it’s backed by a who’s who of other top New Hampshire Democrats — including every Democratic state senator, both Democrats running for governor and former Reps. Paul Hodes and Carol Shea-Porter. The group filed paperwork with the Federal Election Commission under the name “Granite State Write-In.”

AROUND THE WORLD

A destroyed Russian military tank on April 21, 2022 in Dmytrivka, Ukraine.

A destroyed Russian military tank on April 21, 2022 in Dmytrivka, Ukraine. | Alexey Furman/Getty Images

BANG FOR THE BUCK — Facing an enemy with superior numbers of troops and armor, Ukrainian defenses are holding on with the help of tiny drones that, for a few hundred dollars, can deliver an explosive charge capable of destroying a Russian tank worth more than $2 million, writes Veronika Mekozerova.

The FPV — or “first-person view” — drones used in such strikes are equipped with an onboard camera that enables skilled operators to direct them to their target with pinpoint accuracy. Before the war, a teenager might hope to get one for a New Year present. Now they are being used as agile weapons that can transform battlefield outcomes. Others are watching, and learning, from a technology that is giving early adopters an asymmetric advantage against established methods of warfare.

“It’s hard to handle the emotion when a drone pilot hits a tank. The whole group and the whole platoon are happy like babies. Infantry units are rejoicing nearby. Everyone is screaming, and hugging. Although they do not know the guy who gave them this happiness,” Sergeant Yegor Firsov, deputy commander of a Ukrainian army strike drone unit, wrote in a Facebook post.

A typical FPV weighs up to one kilogram, has four small engines, a battery, a frame and a camera connected wirelessly to goggles worn by a pilot operating it remotely. It can carry up to 2.5 kilograms of explosives and strike a target at a speed of up to 150 kilometers per hour, explains Pavlo Tsybenko, acting director of the Dronarium military academy outside Kyiv.

“This drone costs up to $400 and can be made anywhere. We made ours using microchips imported from China and details we bought on AliExpress. We made the carbon frame ourselves. And, yeah, the batteries are from Tesla. One car has like 1,100 batteries that can be used to power these little guys,” Tsybenko told POLITICO on a recent visit, showing the custom-made FPV drones used by the academy to train future drone pilots.

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Nightly Number

2.5 million

The number of student loan borrowers who were hit with billing mistakes last month, after one of the Education Department’s contracted loan servicing companies failed to send timely billing statements, resulting in hundreds of thousands of borrowers missing their payments. The loan servicing errors by the Missouri Higher Education Loan Authority were so serious, officials said, that the department would withhold $7.2 million of compensation due to the company for October.

RADAR SWEEP

PARCHED — Much of the American West is running out of water. Between droughts and demands from the population, there’s been an ongoing, slow moving crisis in states like Arizona, Nevada and California. Lawmakers are trying all kinds of solutions — desalinating and recycling water in different ways in attempts to solve the problem. But as Kyle Paoletta writes in The New Republic, there’s another component of the problem that politicians don’t want to address — urban sprawl that’s expanded cities and made it harder to reach populations that are expanding outwards. This problem has all kinds of components, but as suburbs grow, how to service them all with water becomes an increasingly tricky puzzle.

Parting Image

On this date in 1956: People of Budapest, cut off from food supplies during fighting between rebels and Soviet troops, line up to get their share of potatoes dumped in a street. The spuds were part of a relief food shipment.