Artsakh (Nagorno-Karabakh) Minister of State Ruben Vardanyan gave interviews to the international media, presenting the situation created by Azerbaijan's ongoing blockade of the Lachin corridor linking Artsakh to Armenia, the State Minister's office reports.

In an interview with Radio Sweden, Vardanyan was asked to comment on the “environmental” reasons brought forward by the Azerbaijani side for closing the corridor, and the violation of the  November 9, 2020 trilateral statement. Vardanyan said that Azerbaijan’s arguments are untrustworthy for everyone because the whole world knows that nothing happens at the “responsibility of environmentalists” in an authoritarian country.

“Can you remember how many environmental protests took place in Azerbaijan in the last 10 years,” he asked. “We do not have mechanisms in Artsakh to put pressure on a country that has signed a document confirming the right to free use of the corridor, and today it is violating it. We demand that the international community provide us with a humanitarian air corridor so that we can bring food and basic necessities. However, Azerbaijan does not allow this either. Therefore, we perceive this as a state policy, a state position that very clearly shows that they want to get us all out of here and carry out ethnic cleansing in order to get Artsakh without Armenians.”

And in an interview to the Byline Times of the UK, Vardanyan presented the situation resulting from the aforesaid Azerbaijani blockade.

“Twenty-four days we are into this blockade,” he said. “We get a little bit of food from the Red Cross and Russian peacekeepers. But in reality, we don’t have basic foodstuffs. No fruit, no vegetables. We have a little grain and meat and some milk. Other things do not exist anymore.”  “No cigarettes,” he added

Vardanyan said he was among 5,000 natives of Artsakh who will be apart from their families this Christmas.

“My wife and four kids planned our Christmas many months ago,” he said.

Thanks to the Azerbaijan blockade they are stranded: “For the first time in my life I am apart from my family at Christmas. Basically, we are hostages to Azerbaijan while we can’t get access to the road,” Vardanyan said.

Also, he called on the international community to impose sanctions if Azerbaijan persisted with the blockade. 

“There’s little chance of that. By a perverse irony, the Russian invasion of Ukraine has forced the west, driven by a desperate search from energy security, into the arms of Azerbaijan. European President Ursula Von Der Leyen made this explicit when she stated in July that ‘Europe is turning to trustworthy energy suppliers. Azerbaijan is one of them,’” added the Byline Times.  

“By blocking the Lachin Corridor, [Azerbaijani President Ilham] Aliyev was signalling yet again that he is moving towards full control of an area which Armenians see as a part of their heritage, religion, culture and historic identity,” it noted.