Just moments before the first attacks erupted, high in the hills of Nagorno-Karabakh, soldiers and conscripts of the region’s Defense Army began noticing something ominous. The Russian peacekeepers — stationed as a buffer between them and enemy forces — were hastily boarding vehicles and retreating. Across the desolate stretch of no-man’s-land, camouflage netting was being stripped from Azerbaijani military equipment, and ambulances were gathering on paved roads leading to Azerbaijani positions fortified with barbed wire and mines—a harbinger of what was to come.
Elsewhere, Ruben’s day was disrupted in a way that will haunt him forever. His wife, Nouné, had taken their two daughters to the dentist when chaos struck. As air raid sirens wailed through the city, he quickly grabbed his jacket and ran out to find them. The city was in turmoil — families sprinting to shelters, shops frantically closing their shutters, and traffic gridlocked as panic-stricken parents raced to retrieve children from schools and kindergartens. Ruben managed to reunite with his family and brought them to a shelter beneath a church near the security services building. Unbeknownst to them, Nouné and the girls would spend the following six days confined to that shelter.
As Russian peacekeepers abandoned their posts — breaking their commitment to shield the breakaway region after the 2020 war — Nagorno-Karabakh’s troops braced for what would become their ultimate battle in the decades-long struggle over this contested territory. Though located within Azerbaijan’s internationally recognized borders, the region had been controlled by Armenian separatists since the Soviet Union’s collapse. Within a week, the separatist forces were defeated, and the entire Armenian population of Nagorno-Karabakh was fleeing en masse, taking whatever possessions they could cram into cars or strap to the tops of buses.
The violent end of Nagorno-Karabakh underscored Russia’s waning influence, which has been severely diminished by its disastrous invasion of Ukraine. This geopolitical shift also marked a personal failure for Charles Michel, the then-president of the European Council. While European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen was busy striking new energy deals with Azerbaijan, Michel—a milder-mannered former Belgian prime minister—had positioned himself as a mediator in the escalating conflict between Armenia and Azerbaijan.
For nearly two years, Michel sought to assert himself in EU foreign policy, trying to prevent war in the volatile South Caucasus. Whenever journalists approached his office about other European matters, they were often met with the stock response: Michel was preoccupied with averting a crisis in the region.
The EU saw an opportunity to fill the power vacuum left by Russia’s strategic decline in its former sphere of influence. Michel sought to replace Moscow’s cynical realpolitik with a values-driven, humanitarian-focused approach. However, despite his efforts to engage with both Armenia and Azerbaijan, his initiative was ultimately undermined by a fundamental misreading of his counterparts and a failure to grasp the true severity of the stakes involved.
The catastrophic end of Nagorno-Karabakh was not just a humanitarian and political tragedy; it was a harsh reminder of the EU’s struggle to effectively assert its role as a global mediator in an increasingly unstable world.
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