Ani Kirakosyani discovered she was going to have a baby just a month after the Nagorno-Karabakh blockade started.
Kirakosyani said to CNN that in her village called Haterk, which is located in a valley between the hills of Caucasus, they ran out of food quickly, and the shops began to shut down. The only food she had was what she could get from her garden, mostly tomatoes and beans.
During her pregnancy, Kirakosyani was unable to go to her hospital appointments because there was not enough fuel for public transportation. Instead, she had to walk for long distances to a nearby medical clinic. However, this clinic was not able to catch any issues with her pregnancy early on, according to what she told CNN over the phone.
Kirakosyani is a person who lives in Nagorno-Karabakh. Nagorno-Karabakh is a place where there are 120,000 people. It is called the Republic of Artsakh by the people who live there. It is a place that is argued over because some people think it belongs to Azerbaijan. Most of the people who live there are Armenian. The area has been stopped and cut off since December 2022 when the only road connecting the region to the outside world was blocked by people who care about the environment with support from the Azerbaijani government. They have also put a military checkpoint on that road. The International Association of Genocide Scholars (IAGS) was concerned that there could be a genocide happening to the Armenian people in Nagorno-Karabakh.
Kirakosyani was six months pregnant when she started feeling a pain in her belly. She had to go to the hospital. On the way, the ambulance had to make a stop and pick up six more patients because the driver needed to conserve fuel. When Kirakosyani got to the hospital, she was told that her pregnancy was in danger and she would have to have her baby three months earlier than planned.
Her husband was not home because he was working in the military. He couldn’t find fuel to travel 100 miles by car to be there for her in the hospital. She was by herself when the doctors told her that she had a stillbirth caused by not eating enough food and being very worried, she said.
Kirakosyani told CNN that she would have been playing with her child today if there wasn’t a blockade.
The number of recorded miscarriages has increased four times compared to last year, according to statistics given to CNN by the Ombudsman of the Artsakh Republic. The Ombudsman is a public official who watches over the protection of human rights by government bodies.
And, because there is not enough food, fuel, and medicine due to the long blockade, the people in the region are suffering. Officials in the area reported the first death from not having enough food on August 15. Gegham Stepanyan, the ombudsman of Artsakh, confirmed this over the phone with CNN.
Foreign media have been denied access to the area ever since the blockade began.
The Tom Lantos Human Rights Commission, which is a group of US politicians from different parties, has planned a hearing for Wednesday to discuss what’s happening in Nagorno-Karabakh.
The Lachin corridor is a route that is important for Nagorno-Karabakh as it used to bring 90% of their food from Armenia.
The International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC), which used to be the only organization allowed to bring help to people in need through the Lachin corridor, last gave food to the region on June 14. The information was shared in a press release by the ICRC on August 18.
In August, experts from the United Nations asked Azerbaijan to stop the severe humanitarian crisis in the area by removing the blockade. Additionally, Luis Moreno Ocampo, the former chief prosecutor of the International Criminal Court, stated that there is a valid reason to believe that Armenians are experiencing genocide.
In response to what Ocampo said, a lawyer hired by Azerbaijan said that the accusation of genocide is unfounded and very risky.
Arayik Harutyunyan, the President of Artsakh who was elected in 2020, stated in an email to CNN that Azerbaijan has cut off supplies and access to Artsakh with the main intention of trying to kill our people.
CNN asked the Armenian government for their opinion, and they shared statements made by Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan during a meeting with his advisors. He said that Azerbaijan is causing harm to the Armenians in Nagorno-Karabakh by not giving them enough food, which he called a genocide.
CNN contacted the Azerbaijani foreign ministry for a comment, but they haven’t received a response yet.
There is not enough food, medicine, water, and fuel coming into the area, so the local supplies are running out. According to the government of Artsakh Republic, they do not have milk products, grains, fish, chicken, cooking oil, sugar, salt, fruits, vegetables, fuel, and hygiene products inside their territory.
Max Mkhitaryan, who owns a shop, showed CNN around his store in the main city, Stepanakert.
He told CNN that he used to get most of his fruits and vegetables from Armenia before the blockade. The only things still on the shelves were bags of bread, honey made nearby, and a small number of vodka bottles. He can now only help one out of every ten customers because there is hardly anything left on the shelves.
In the past, I used to help 250 people every day, but now I can only help my own family. “I have just one more week before the shop closes and I don’t have a job,” he told CNN.
There are long lines of people outside his store, stretching through the messy streets, waiting for bread. The trash pickup is being delayed often because there is not enough fuel. And in the nearby pharmacy, the products are running out quickly.
According to Stepanyan, the shortage of fuel has caused a lack of electricity. This means that there are power cuts for eight hours each day. Additionally, the shortage of fuel has also led to untreated drinking water which has caused an increase in illnesses.
The people who run the enclave say that 95% of the residents are not getting enough food and important nutrients like vitamins and minerals.
As winter is coming and it’s time to harvest the crops, people in Nagorno-Karabakh are worried because they don’t have enough fuel to gather their crops. They feel like nobody is listening to their pleas for help.
Armenia and Azerbaijan have been fighting over the status of Nagorno-Karabakh since the Soviet Union ended. Nationalism became dominant when there was no governing power, and this led to violence against people from different ethnic groups happening right away. Both the Armenians living in Azerbaijan and the Azeris living in Armenia argue that they were forcibly removed from their homes because of their ethnicity, resulting in lasting emotional wounds for many generations on both sides of the border they are arguing over.
In the early 1990s, Armenian forces gained power over big areas of land in and around Nagorno-Karabakh. Azerbaijan, with the support of Turkey, took over a big part of those areas in a war that lasted for six weeks in 2020. Many people lost their lives during the conflict.
The separatist area only had the main city of Stepanakert and a few nearby towns. The people there were still suffering from the losses of the violent 2020 conflict, and there were occasional small fights along the border. During the recent increase in tensions, Baku says it will take back and join the territory with Azerbaijan completely. However, ethnic Armenians are unwilling to leave the region as they believe it is their homeland.
Ronald Suny, a professor at the University of Michigan, said to CNN that Azerbaijan’s main objective after winning the war in 2020 against Armenia is to forcefully remove the Armenian population in the region called Artsakh and make it part of Azerbaijan.
Instead of using physical force which would cause other countries to oppose them, Baku is resolved to make the Armenians’ lives extremely difficult, deprive them of food, and force them to leave.
To add to the complexity, Azerbaijan, a country where one political party is in control and has been led by President Ilham Aliyev for the past 20 years, has suggested providing the breakaway region with supplies through a border crossing in the nearby Azerbaijani city, Aghdam.
Harutyunyan, the leader of Nagorno-Karabakh, told CNN that our people are worried about the safety of any products from Azerbaijan because Azerbaijan has a history of wanting to kill us Armenians and has a government policy of hating us.
“He said Azerbaijan should stop pretending to help people and open the Lachin corridor. ”
As the blockade continues without any anticipated end, Peter Stano, a spokesperson for EU foreign affairs, expressed worries about the dire humanitarian conditions. He urged for the complete reopening of the Lachin corridor, allowing for the passage of medical evacuations and humanitarian aid.
A spokesperson from the US State Department told CNN through email that they want the government of Azerbaijan to quickly allow the free movement of commercial, humanitarian, and private vehicles through the Lachin corridor.
But Harutyunyan told CNN that he was not happy with how the EU and the US have reacted until now. He believes that their lack of action and failure is solely based on geopolitical reasons.
“He also mentioned that one of the reasons is the dependence on Azerbaijan for energy. ”
According to Reuters, the European Union decided in July 2022 to increase their gas purchases from Azerbaijan by two times before 2027.
Russia, who helped establish the ceasefire in 2020, has peacekeepers positioned along the Lachin corridor. However, Russia has chosen not to get involved any further.
CNN has tried to contact the Russian Foreign Ministry but they haven’t received a response yet.
A spokesperson from the Russian Foreign Ministry, Maria Zakharova, said during a meeting on August 2 that Russia doesn’t agree with any accusations of not taking action to help the Russian peacekeepers. They believe these claims are not helpful and do not consider the actual support the peacekeepers provide to stabilize the situation.
Artyom Tonoyan, a professor at Hamline University in the United States, said that the Russians, who typically have control over the Caucasus region, are currently too focused on Ukraine to try and reduce the conflict there.
Because it doesn’t seem like countries will work together to stop the blockade anytime soon, the people of Nagorno-Karabakh have to find quick fixes to survive. They have to find firewood, get water, and search for food.
Last year at this time, Anahit Gharaghazaryan, who is a schoolteacher and a mother of three children, told CNN that she was getting ready to teach her students as they came back to school after the summer vacation.
Her son was supposed to start school next week. Instead, she is concerned about how he will manage during the winter season.
Doctors believe that it is wrong for kids to keep going to school if they are malnourished. Additionally, this year many kids cannot go to school because they don’t have a way to get there and they don’t have the things they need like pens, books, and clothes.
In August, at a meeting of the UN Security Council, Armenia’s Deputy Foreign Minister, Vahe Gevorgyan, said that the blockade by Azerbaijan had harmed 2,000 pregnant women, around 30,000 children, 20,000 elderly people, and 9,000 people with disabilities.
If the blockade continues for much longer, more and more people will suffer from hunger. “I can’t sleep because I’m worried about how I will provide food for my three sons,” Gharaghazaryan said. We are all losing faith. How many more people need to die before the world pays attention.