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Comment by dpq | Hacker News Reader

Unfortunately, this post is maddeningly accurate. Keep in mind that Putin signed a military alliance agreement with Azerbaijan the day before he invaded Ukraine. I perceive that this is an unveiled threat to Armenia: do as you are told, or we'll look the other way when you get invaded and (most likely) massacred by our new ally.

A widespread opinion is that the 2020 war was enabled/allowed by Russia to punish Armenia for its drift towards the West. Personally I find this scenario reasonably probable.

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> drift towards the West

This is a little bit of overstatement.

As a result of mass protests prime minister resigned. Emergent leader of the protests won elections and became prime minister. At some point later after vote of no confidence he won elections again.

It's not drifting to the West, it's changing government by elections, what made Russia to put pressure to Armenia

The vote of no confidence occured already after the war, if I am not mistaken. Or, rather, he resigned to enable new elections and confirm his legitimacy after the military disaster. The bet paid off, mostly because the other main candidate was a Russian-backed ex-president who is almost universally hated for the corruption during his tenure.

I do find that Pashinyan's drift towards France and the U.S. was quite pronounced, by the way.

Armenia has already an alliance with Russia as a member of the CSTO (and sent troops to Kazakhstan as part of it in January). That did not prevent Russia from looking the other way in 2020.

That's because Artsakh (Nagorno-Karabakh) is internationally recognized as being part of Azerbaijan. Even Armenia itself does not officially recognize the independence of Artsakh. Thus from a Russian point of view, Azerbaijani military attacks on Artsakh are an internal matter for the Azerbaijan government and not an act of aggression against Armenia proper which would trigger their mutual defense treaty.

During the war, both Armenian and Azerbaijani forces were doing a kind of kabuki dance, provoking the other side into bombarding either Armenia or Iran, to trigger either regional powers' intervention in the conflict.

It's a sad reality for the Armenian people that they were never truly independent and sovereign, but always a protectorate of the Iranians, Romans, Byzantines, Turks or Russians. I think everyone in Western leadership circles (or at least those who can actually place Armenia on a map) recognizes that and there is not the antagonism against them that, say, Belarus or to a lesser extent Serbia is experiencing.

Russia looked the other way because it was in the interest of Russia to look the other way. I believe the recent events in Ukraine have demonstrated that international law is held in pretty low regard. If Russia found it in their interest to intervene or prevent the war, they would have certainly done that. Instead, they chose to step away from one of their few allies/hostages.

Of course, but in this case they were technically in the clear, unlike Ukraine where one of the smartest things the Biden administration did was to preemptively blow the false flag operations that were being planned to justify the invasion.

The Azerbaijanis were certainly in close coordination with the Russians to establish what the Russian red lines were, and go right up to them, but no further.

> (most likely) massacred by our new ally

Why is that likely? (I'm not skeptical, I really don't know and this stuff is hard to google)

Azerbaijan has lots of oil money and purchases weapons from Israel, Turkey, Ukraine, and Russia, the likes of which Armenia cannot afford.

, and therefore they will kill all the Armenians?

I mean that's means, not motive. "They have weapons, and therefore they will kill everybody" makes no sense to me.

You don’t understand how deeply ingrained their hatred for Armenia goes. It’s literally what they spend surplus money on.

First, Turkey and Azerbaijan are effectively dictatorships flying under the radar using oil money and “west-friendly” trade policies.

Second, Armenia has been Christian for as long as Christianity has existed. Turkey and Azerbaijan are Muslim. There are millennia of wars and conflict over forced conversion that have resulted in “Armenia is the devil” propaganda making its way into the Turk cultures.

Third, in the Turk and Azeri mind, Armenia is the one threat to their “Turkic manifest destiny.” They believe the Caucus should be theirs in order to create a unified “great” Turkic civilization.

So yes, when these countries have the means to buy very efficient weapons, Armenian lives become at risk.

> You don’t understand how deeply ingrained their hatred for Armenia goes.

Correct, that's why I asked!

The core ideology of Azerbaijan is armenophoby, and they do not really hide the fact. Their claim is that Armenians are not native to the, eh, Armenian highlands, and thus should be expelled at the very least. During the 2020 war atrocities such as decapitation of soldiers and civilians were common, as well as cutting off and collecting ears of Armenian PoWs. There have been multiple reports of Armenian churches being demolished or having the Armenian inscriptions erased (talk about cultural expropriation). During the victory parade in 2020, Aliyev and Erdogan were praising Enver Pasha, who was the architect of the 1915 Armenian genocide. Also the very "peculiar" expo of the victory museum. Also the threats to take Armenian provinces by force, if political demands are not met. I believe this paints a more or less complete picture why I don't have any optimism regarding the fate of Armenian civilians should that country fall, although probably people who favor Azerbaijan in this conflict can come up with plausible explanations for every item in this list, including decapitations and tortures of civilians.

A complete picture would also mention that Artsakh obtained its de facto independence for 100,000 Armenians at the cost of ethnically cleansing 700,000 Azeris, Kurds and other ethnicities from the region.

It is also worth to mention that before that 300,000 Armenians were expelled from Azerbaijan, and people from the regions around Artsakh were expelled during a war which have started because Azerbaijan have attempted to deport the remaining 160,000 from Artsakh too.

it is safe to say that the world needs some history deleting virus. if we woke up with no knowledge of history and relations between nations, all this disputes would disappear over night.

Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind

(do no further research before watching this movie, you will thank me)

I don't think the issue is only the history.

Surprisingly large number of people believe that if people in the neighbouring city vote to speak on their language and govern themselves locally, they deserve punishment up to death.

And there is similarly large number of people who believe that it is noble to die for a line on the map.

So forgetting history would have a very small effect only on a very small number of conflicts.

To complete the picture you might also mention that the vast majority of the displaced were not from the disputed region but from the surrounding Karabakh, which is where the fighting spilled once NKR forces pushed back the Azeri army after almost losing everything in 92.

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