Armenia; Nagorno-Karabakh; bilateral relations

Armenia is often viewed as a direct party to the Karabakh conflict and the Azerbaijani side portraits it as an aggressor, which occupies portion of Azerbaijani territory. Although one cannot deny that regular Armenian troops played a crucial role at least in the final stages of the war and until today they are stationed in Nagorno-Karabakh, side by side with the units of the Karabakh Defence Army, it would be an unacceptable simplification to view Armenia as a mere occupational power, which instrumentalizes the Nagorno-Karabakh Republic in order to reach its goals. The aim of the presentation is to demonstrate that unlike the cases of Abkhazia and South Ossetia, which are to large extent instrumentalized by Russia, the relations between Armenia and Nagorno-Karabakh are more balanced and framed by a number of informal institutions, practices and networks. The paper is based on extensive field research conducted between 2009 and 2016, however, the tumultuous development of Armenian-Karabakhi relations after the Armenian Velvet Revolution of 2018 is also reflected.