Armenia–Azerbaijan

What it is

Armenia and Azerbaijan are neighboring former Soviet republics in the South Caucasus. Their bilateral relationship has been defined since 1988 by a territorial dispute over Nagorno-Karabakh (known as Artsakh to Armenians), a landlocked highland enclave recognized internationally as Azerbaijani territory but populated predominantly by ethnic Armenians until 2023. The conflict is the longest-running in the post-Soviet space. Two full wars and a 2023 military resolution have not produced a final peace treaty; as of July 2026 the two governments remain in a US-mediated process, text initialed but not signed.

History

The dispute began in February 1988 when the Nagorno-Karabakh Autonomous Oblast's Soviet-era assembly voted to transfer to the Armenian SSR. The First Karabakh War (1988-1994) killed approximately 30,000 people and displaced over one million; the Bishkek Protocol ceasefire of May 1994 left Armenian forces in control of Nagorno-Karabakh plus seven surrounding Azerbaijani districts. The OSCE Minsk Group, co-chaired by France, Russia, and the United States, managed the resulting stalemate for 26 years without a settlement. In September-November 2020, the 44-day Second Karabakh War saw Azerbaijan retake roughly 75% of the occupied territories, killing over 7,000 soldiers and civilians; a Russian-brokered ceasefire on November 9, 2020 deployed a Russian peacekeeping force inside the enclave. On September 19, 2023, Azerbaijan launched a 24-hour offensive that collapsed the Nagorno-Karabakh Republic's defenses; the enclave was formally dissolved on January 1, 2024. Roughly 110,000 ethnic Armenians, virtually the entire remaining population, fled to Armenia within days.

Current state

On August 8, 2025, Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan and Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev initialed a 17-article peace agreement and signed a joint declaration at the White House, with US President Donald Trump hosting. The two parties jointly asked for the OSCE Minsk Group to be dissolved. The text is initialed, not signed. Azerbaijan's remaining precondition is Armenia's removal of a constitutional reference to the 1990 Armenian independence declaration, which Baku reads as an implicit territorial claim; changing the constitution requires a national referendum, which in turn needs a two-thirds supermajority vote in Armenia's National Assembly. Pashinyan's Civil Contract party won Armenia's June 7, 2026 parliamentary election at roughly 49.8% on a 58.97% turnout, securing a governing majority but falling well short of the two-thirds threshold. The US-brokered TRIPP transit framework grants Washington a 99-year exclusive development right over the Zangezur strip, a roughly 32 km stretch of Armenian territory separating mainland Azerbaijan from its Nakhchivan exclave. Border demarcation is ongoing; roughly 12 km of the approximately 200 km frontier has been formally delimited as of mid-2026. The fate of Armenian POWs still held in Azerbaijan and the question of return rights for the 110,000 displaced Armenians remain outside the initialed text.

Relationships

The conflict has reshuffled South Caucasus alignments. Russia was Armenia's security patron under the Collective Security Treaty Organization but failed to intervene in 2023, destroying its credibility in Yerevan; Armenia suspended CSTO participation in 2024 and pivoted toward the European Union and the United States. Azerbaijan holds a firm alliance with Turkey, which has kept its land border with Armenia closed since 1993 and ties any reopening to the peace treaty's finalization. Iran opposes a US-operated transit corridor on its northern border, treating it as a containment move that severs its land link toward Europe. The United States has displaced Russia as the primary external broker.

What to watch

• Whether Pashinyan can engineer a path to a constitutional referendum, through a coalition supermajority or an alternative legal route, given the arithmetic shortfall after June 2026.
• Aliyev's patience: new preconditions, tightened timelines, or a relaxation of the constitutional demand.
• Commercial and legal detail on the TRIPP corridor, specifically customs arrangements, fee-sharing, and the start of physical works on the restored Nakhchivan rail link.
• Russia and Iran counter-moves against the US footprint in the South Caucasus.
• Any movement on Armenian POWs in Azerbaijani custody and on return rights for displaced Armenians from Nagorno-Karabakh.