According to Pashinyan, Yerevan hopes that the international community, “including Russia, which is a permanent member of the UN Security Council and whose peacekeeping troops are deployed in Nagorno-Karabakh,” will take further steps to lift the blockade in the region.

On December 12th, 2022, a group of Azerbaijanis, who presented themselves as ecologists, blocked the Lachin corridor (the only highway linking Armenia with Nagorno-Karabakh).

Meanwhile Baku assured that civilian vehicles could circulate freely in both directions of the land route, Yerevan considers these events to represent a provocation aimed at creating humanitarian catastrophe in Nagorno-Karabakh.

Pashinián declared in a meeting of the Armenian Government that the blockade had caused a shortage of food in the region, and on December 14th he appealed to the European Court of Human Rights in order to force the unblocking of the corridor.

Nagorno-Karabakh is a region with a majority of Armenian population, but located within the territory of Azerbaijan; Yerevan and Baku have fought several wars for its possession since its secession in 1988 from what was then the Azerbaijani SSR.

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