It seems Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov huffed and puffed and then … stopped trying to strong arm Armenia into giving the Kremlin a say in the Armenian-Azerbaijani peace process.

Lavrov spent a portion of the last week grousing about a decision by Armenia and Azerbaijan to set aside differences over a transit arrangement, dubbed the Zangezur corridor, amid discussions on a durable peace deal between the two states. The decision to address Zangezur separately from a peace pact stands to greatly diminish Russian influence in the region. Under a blueprint drafted in 2020, Russian forces would have had a major role in ensuring “security” in the Zangezur corridor.

The Kremlin didn’t accept the development quietly. During an August 18-19 visit to Azerbaijan, Russian leader Vladimir Putin dropped not-so-subtle hints that he wants to remain a powerbroker in the Caucasus. And in a late August interview broadcast on Azerbaijani television, Lavrov lashed out at Armenia, claiming Yerevan is reneging on an agreement signed in 2020 concerning the Zangezur corridor. “It is the Armenian leadership that is sabotaging an agreement signed by Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan. It is difficult to understand the meaning of such a position,” Lavrov complained.

The heavy-handed approach did little to sway Pashinyan. During an August 31 news conference, the Armenian prime minister emphatically stated that Yerevan sought to finalize a peace pact with Baku without any third-party assistance. He went on to deride Russian leaders’ efforts to cast themselves as disinterested peacemakers. “How do you imagine that, for example, a country that accuses Armenia of sabotaging that topic [transit arrangements] can act as a mediator in regional transit arrangements? The one who makes such a statement excludes himself from all possible mediations,” Pashinyan stated.

“I can say that regional transit routes have not been opened up to this point, including due to the comments of a number of Russian partners that have nothing to do with the logic of the document [the 2020 blueprint] and contradict it,” he added.

The verbal sparring over Zangezur ended with Lavrov seeming to give up on efforts to cajole Yerevan into acceding to the Kremlin’s wishes. If Armenia wants to make peace with Azerbaijan without Russian mediation, “so be it,” the official Russian news agency TASS quoted Lavrov as saying during a meeting with students at MGIMO University in Moscow on September 2.

Moscow, Baku and Ankara had been pushing for the creation of the Zangezur corridor since late 2020. The route would connect Azerbaijan and Turkey, with Russia serving as the security guarantor. Yerevan strongly opposed the project and any foreign control over the transit route, instead suggesting a route under Armenian control and following Armenia’s customs regulations. The issue had been a major sticking point in peace talks. 

With the Zangezur deadlock now set aside for further negotiations at a later, undetermined date, Russia seems to have lost a lot of leverage in the Caucasus. The biggest remaining obstacle to a peace settlement now appears to be Azerbaijan’s insistence that Yerevan alter the Armenian constitution to acknowledge Baku’s sovereignty over the Nagorno-Karabakh territory.

Since Armenia’s loss of Karabakh to Azerbaijan in September 2023, Yerevan has sought to distance itself from Russia, its erstwhile strategic partner, and seek closer relations with the United States and European Union. Armenia remains economically reliant on Russia, but Moscow has given no indication to date that it will use its economic leverage over Yerevan to get what it wants on the Zangezur question.