“It’s like living in a cage – people running around looking for medicine while young mothers are helping each other find baby food”

The Lachin Corridor, the only road in or out of Nagorno-Karabakh, has now been closed for a week. My report for @eurasianet
eurasianet.org/supplies-begin… Supplies of food, fuel and prescription drugs are running low, locals say, while officials tell me the humanitarian crisis is deepening.

Azerbaijan accuses Armenia of using the road to bring in weaponry and export illegally mined gold.

With more and more Western nations closing their borders to Russians fleeing mobilization, countries like Georgia and Armenia are being left to bear the brunt.

I spoke to those arriving with nothing, locals being priced out & policymakers for @OCMediaorg
oc-media.org/features/suitc… Hundreds of thousands of Russians arriving "will have severe security and socio-economic implications and possibly cause a more significant crisis in certain regions," MEP @MarketkaG tells me, arguing the EU should "increase support to maintain stability in the South Caucasus".

It seems that Putin’s ‘partial’ mobilization is becoming more indiscriminate, and more unpopular. Here’s a few examples🧵

A Russian woman in St. Petersburg confronts plain-clothes officials handing out summons for military service to men in the lobby of an apartment building. Police hand out povestkas - summons to present to the recruitment office - outside a metro station on the outskirts of Moscow.

One local representative in the capital, Kirill Shchitov, has raised the issue of locals being indiscriminately conscripted on public transport.

Good morning from the Armenian city of Goris.

Just across these mountains is the border with Azerbaijan & the disputed region of Nagorno-Karabakh, where there are warnings a full-scale war could break out.

I'm going to try and explain what both sides say is going on. THREAD 🧵 Yesterday, Russian peacekeepers, who have been tasked with holding the contact line under the terms of a 2020 ceasefire, reported Azerbaijani troops had carried out drone strikes killing three AM servicemen, and begun pushing into Armenian-held villages.

https://twitter.com/GabrielCSGavin/status/1507764368028672002?s=20&t=aFiWOGcOZW8wltkWrvS4Rw

BREAKING: Russia is accusing Azerbaijani troops of entering the area protected by its 'peacekeeping' mission in Nagorno-Karabakh.

Comes hours after Armenia accused Baku of trying to "ignite a war" and Yerevan called on Putin for support. English version of statement here

Russian President Vladimir Putin has held talks with Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan after reports Azerbaijani forces crossed the contact line in Nagorno-Karabakh.

Russian peacekeepers are said to have done nothing to stop what Yerevan says is a major escalation. Azerbaijan's armed forces are clearly calculating that Moscow is distracted by its disastrous invasion of Ukraine, and weaker than first thought.

I wrote about Baku's gamble and the rapidly escalating conflict from Yerevan today.

https://twitter.com/GabrielCSGavin/status/1507356804212211712?s=20&t=jg1KifVwLol70iiIvKdDBw

Hackers have got hold of orders from Russia's most popular delivery service and plotted it out on a map.

Interestingly, hundreds of separate people have ordered food to near the Kremlin staff entrance. Many have ordered hundreds or thousands of dollars of takeout in 6 months. If Putin's inner circle is chowing down on takeaways, their aides seem to be ordering it for them, with an absence of big names in the data.

For example, Andrei here, graduated from a prestigious Moscow university in 2014 - just the type to be getting a plum job meeting couriers

The Russian government has just sent out a mass email informing citizens it will block Instagram by 0:00am on Monday.

It accuses the site of supporting “genocide” & says it is breaking the Geneva Conventions designed as a response to the Nazis. Totally disconnected from reality “Because the management of the social network Instagram, contrary to international law, for the first time in history and only with regard to Russians allowed calls to violence, the Prosecutor General's Office decided to ban this social network in Russia”

Have received notifications telling me all my foreign cards have stopped working on Russian services, mainly Yandex. Foreign friends telling me their cards started being declined in person at checkouts last night.

Others saying some Russian banks now cut off from ApplePay.

According to Kommersant, Lavrov asked Liz Truss if the UK accepts Voronezh & Rostov as part of Russia.

“We will never recognise Russian sovereignty over these regions,” she apparently replied.

The British ambassador is said to have gently corrected her
kommersant.ru/doc/5207486?fr… Worth caveating that Kommersant, which is one of Russia's best and most reputable broadsheets, cites anonymous foreign ministry sources here. The British embassy has apparently not commented.