Location map of Nagorno-Karabakh in the South Caucasus. Public domain image.
Relations between Armenia and Azerbaijan were remade by force between 2020 and 2023. For almost three decades, Nagorno-Karabakh was the most visible issue: a region internationally recognized as part of Azerbaijan, but governed in practice by local Armenians with Armenian support after the 1991-1994 war. Azerbaijan’s victory in 2020, followed by its September 2023 offensive and the near-total flight of the region’s Armenian population, changed the negotiation’s center of gravity. The main question is no longer who controls Nagorno-Karabakh, but whether a military victory can be converted into recognized borders, lawful movement, protection for affected people and normal diplomatic relations.
That shift did not end the political conflict. For Baku, the recovery of Nagorno-Karabakh confirmed Azerbaijan’s territorial integrity and removed any future autonomy formula for the former separatist region. For Yerevan, the priority became protecting Armenia’s internationally recognized territory, preventing an extraterritorial passage through southern Armenia and managing the displacement of Nagorno-Karabakh Armenians. By June 2026, the issue was less whether a peace text could be drafted than whether its rules on borders, transit, legal claims and implementation would restrain future pressure. Russia and Turkey remain direct security actors, while Iran, the European Union and the United States shape routes, energy and diplomacy.
Summary
- Nagorno-Karabakh was inside Azerbaijan, but had an Armenian-majority population and a separate de facto government from 1994 to 2023. That combination created a clash between political self-determination, territorial integrity and military control.
- The 2020 war sharply reduced the territory held by local Armenian forces, and Azerbaijan’s September 2023 offensive ended the separatist administration. Almost all Armenians in the region fled to Armenia soon afterward.
- The Armenia-Azerbaijan border became the central issue after 2023. Delimitation, demarcation, local security and the withdrawal of forces from disputed areas will decide whether peace becomes stable or remains an armed pause.
- Connectivity with Nakhchivan is the most sensitive transport question. Azerbaijan wants a land link to its exclave, while Armenia insists that any route through southern Armenia must remain under Armenian sovereignty and jurisdiction.
- The mediation format has changed. The OSCE closed the Minsk Process after the 2025 Washington declaration, Russia was weakened by the war in Ukraine and by its crisis with Yerevan, and the United States and the European Union gained room by connecting peace with trade and infrastructure.
How Nagorno-Karabakh Created the Modern Conflict
Nagorno-Karabakh lies in the South Caucasus, in a mountainous area that the Soviet Union administered as an autonomous oblast inside the Azerbaijan Soviet Socialist Republic. Soviet borders did not erase the region’s Armenian-majority population or the cultural and political connection many residents felt with Armenia. When the Soviet state began losing coercive capacity in the late 1980s, the regional parliament asked for Nagorno-Karabakh to be transferred to Armenia. A dispute that Moscow had previously contained through administrative control then became a conflict driven by national mobilization and open war. Expulsions and intercommunal violence gave the conflict a lasting social dimension.
The first war, from 1991 to 1994, ended with an Armenian advantage. Local Armenian forces, backed by Armenia, controlled Nagorno-Karabakh and surrounding Azerbaijani districts. Those areas served as a security belt and a land connection to Armenia. The 1994 Bishkek ceasefire froze the military line without settling sovereignty. The result was an unstable arrangement: Azerbaijan retained international recognition over the territory, while local Armenians held de facto control without international recognition.
That arrangement gave each side opposite incentives. Armenia and the Nagorno-Karabakh authorities tried to preserve a wartime territorial reality even without external recognition. Azerbaijan had lost territory and absorbed large numbers of internally displaced people. It therefore invested energy revenue, military rebuilding and external alliances in changing the balance of power. The ceasefire worked less as peace than as a long suspension of hostilities, because neither side accepted the political cost of yielding.
The Minsk Group and the Limits of Post-Soviet Diplomacy
The Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe created the Minsk Group in 1992 to seek a negotiated solution. Russia brought regional influence. The United States and France added Western weight and multilateral legitimacy. The format kept diplomatic channels open, but it depended on a difficult compromise. The parties would have had to accept Azerbaijan’s territorial integrity, guarantees for Nagorno-Karabakh’s Armenians and an answer for displaced people.
The difficulty was political. For Azerbaijan, any settlement that left Nagorno-Karabakh outside Baku’s effective control seemed to legitimize territorial loss. For local Armenians, accepting Azerbaijani sovereignty without strong guarantees meant placing their safety in the hands of the state they had fought. For Armenia, the dispute also touched domestic politics, memory of the Armenian genocide and fear of regional isolation, since the borders with Turkey and Azerbaijan had been closed for decades. Without an enforcement mechanism accepted by all sides, mediation could propose principles, yet it lacked the capacity to make governments bear the political cost of applying them.
Russia’s role inside this system was ambiguous. Moscow was Armenia’s formal ally through the Collective Security Treaty Organization and maintained a military base in Armenia, yet it sold weapons to Azerbaijan and tried to preserve leverage over both sides. That ambiguity made Russia useful as a mediator, since Baku and Yerevan both needed to talk to Moscow. The same ambiguity prevented a clear guarantee for Nagorno-Karabakh, because Moscow gained leverage when both countries depended on its intervention.
The 2020 War and Azerbaijan’s Military Turn
The 2020 war showed that the military balance of the 1990s had disappeared. Azerbaijan used hydrocarbon revenue to reform and modernize its armed forces. Drones, artillery and Turkish support helped Baku recover districts around Nagorno-Karabakh and parts of the region itself. The capture of Shusha, a city with strategic and symbolic value, left Armenian forces in a fragile position. The war proved that a frozen negotiation could be reopened by a material shift in power, technology and alliances. The Russian-mediated agreement of 9-10 November 2020 stopped the war and returned areas to Azerbaijan. The agreement placed Russian peacekeepers along the Lachin route, the road between Armenia and the Armenians who remained in Nagorno-Karabakh.
That agreement did not create a final settlement. It left Nagorno-Karabakh’s status undefined, preserved a limited Russian military presence and promised the reopening of regional communications. For Baku, the text opened the way to demand a land link with Nakhchivan, Azerbaijan’s exclave between Armenia, Iran and Turkey. For Yerevan, the same clause meant reopening routes under the sovereignty of the states they crossed. The word “corridor” therefore became a legal and political dispute: an Armenian-regulated transit route or a special passage with external control.
Russia’s presence became less reliable as well. After Russia invaded Ukraine in 2022, Moscow lost military capacity, diplomatic attention and credibility with the Armenian government. When border clashes reached areas that Yerevan considered recognized Armenian territory, Armenia complained that the CSTO did not provide effective protection. That frustration pushed Armenia to treat national security as a problem of diplomatic diversification and to reduce dependence on the Russian alliance.
2023 and the End of Local Armenian Rule in Nagorno-Karabakh
From December 2022 to September 2023, the Lachin corridor became the center of the humanitarian crisis. Azerbaijan imposed growing restrictions on movement, first through protesters presented as environmental activists and later through an official checkpoint. For Nagorno-Karabakh’s Armenians, the interruption of the link to Armenia reduced access to food, medicine and fuel. For Baku, the measure was presented as sovereign control over a route inside Azerbaijani territory and as a response to activities it considered illegal.
In September 2023, Azerbaijan launched a military operation that defeated local Armenian forces in about a day. The separatist authorities accepted disarmament and announced the dissolution of their institutions. In the following days, almost the entire Armenian population of Nagorno-Karabakh left for Armenia. International missions and agencies recorded both the sudden character of the exodus and the very small number of Armenians who remained. The political effect was decisive: Nagorno-Karabakh stopped functioning as a separate de facto entity. The departure of its Armenian population made humanitarian, property and legal questions a permanent part of the negotiation.
Azerbaijan argues that it restored control over internationally recognized territory and that Armenians could reintegrate as Azerbaijani citizens. Armenia and many Armenian observers describe the episode as ethnic cleansing or coercive displacement, because the population fled after months of blockade, military threat and deep distrust of Baku’s guarantees. The difference between those readings affects any future peace. If the matter is treated as settled sovereignty, displaced people and return rights will remain marginal. A protection-based approach would require mechanisms that Azerbaijan resists internationalizing.
Borders, Enclaves and the Risk of Incomplete Peace
After 2023, the international border became the most practical and dangerous part of the dispute. Armenia and Azerbaijan inherited Soviet-era boundaries that were not always marked on the ground with operational precision. In rural areas, roads, pastures, hilltops and villages can lie close to military positions, turning small changes in control into national crises. Delimitation is the political and cartographic agreement on where the border runs. Demarcation is the physical marking of that border. Without both steps, patrols and residents remain exposed to incidents that each government can portray as aggression by the other.
Enclaves make the problem harder. Azerbaijan claims villages that existed as Azerbaijani enclaves inside Soviet Armenia, while Armenia fears that returning areas without infrastructure guarantees could cut internal roads and weaken border communities. These disputes require more than old maps. The governments need secure access for residents, road engineering, predictable military positions and credible investigation of incidents.
In practice, the border also separates two security narratives. Azerbaijan, now militarily stronger, wants to consolidate its gains and prevent Armenia from reopening the Nagorno-Karabakh question through international forums. Armenia, weakened by defeat and by the breakdown of trust in Russia, wants mutual recognition to protect it against further territorial demands. Peace will be durable only if the border stops being a zone where the stronger side tests the other side’s tolerance.
Corridors, Nakhchivan and Regional Economics
Regional connectivity is often presented as an obvious economic benefit, but in the South Caucasus it is inseparable from sovereignty. Azerbaijan wants a link between its main territory and Nakhchivan, the exclave that borders Turkey. Such a route would reduce Azerbaijan’s dependence on paths through Iran and reinforce the Azerbaijan-Turkey axis. The route could connect the Caspian Sea to Anatolia through transport and trade. For that reason, Baku and Ankara treat the route as part of Turkic integration and regional projection.
For Armenia, the same project can be either an opportunity or a threat. If the route operates under Armenian law, Armenian customs and reciprocity, Yerevan could gain trade, infrastructure and partial relief from the isolation created by closed borders. If the route becomes extraterritorial, with reduced inspection or external control, Armenia would lose authority over Syunik, the southern province that connects it to Iran. The transport dispute is therefore a decision about jurisdiction, fees, monitoring and the power to interrupt passage.
Iran follows this issue closely because its border with Armenia is short but strategic. Tehran does not want an Azerbaijan-Turkey connection that reduces Iran’s value as an alternative route and changes the balance on its northern frontier. For Iran, the route is less an isolated railway than a change in the political geography of its neighborhood. Russia also sees a risk in losing the role of route guardian and mediator, although its ability to impose outcomes has weakened. The United States and the European Union, by contrast, see connectivity as a way to reduce Russian dependencies and open Eurasian commercial routes through partners closer to the West.
Mediation After Russia
Russia was indispensable in 1994 and 2020, but it ceased to be the uncontested arbiter after 2022. Its war against Ukraine consumed resources and damaged its relations with the West. At the same time, Armenia concluded that Russian protection did not prevent pressure on Lachin, the 2023 offensive or border incursions that Yerevan considers violations of Armenian territory. That perception reduced Armenia’s tolerance for a regional order in which Moscow appears as guarantor without guaranteeing security.
The European Union filled part of that space through political meetings, humanitarian support, assistance for delimitation and a civilian monitoring mission on the Armenian side of the border. The EU’s strength is its ability to offer economic incentives, diplomatic legitimacy and non-military monitoring. Its limit is the lack of coercive instruments and Europe’s dependence on Azerbaijani energy, which makes a harder line against Baku more difficult. The EU can facilitate talks and reduce local risks, although it is unlikely to force Azerbaijan to accept terms that Baku sees as contradicting its victory.
The United States gained prominence by hosting the August 2025 initialing of a peace agreement text and a joint declaration between President Ilham Aliyev and Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan. The initialed text recognizes the borders inherited from the Soviet republics, rejects territorial claims, bars the use or threat of force and provides for diplomatic relations after ratification. The joint declaration also calls for connectivity between mainland Azerbaijan and Nakhchivan through Armenian territory, on the basis of respect for state sovereignty, territorial integrity and jurisdiction, and introduces the Trump Route for International Peace and Prosperity (TRIPP) as the route project to be developed by Armenia with the United States and mutually agreed third parties. That formula changed the corridor dispute: a passage Baku had treated as a strategic axis would, at least in the political text, depend on Armenian law and U.S. participation. Still, initialing is not the same as entry into force. By June 2026, implementation still required final signature, ratification and arrangements on transport, detainees, missing persons, international legal claims and hostile rhetoric. The OSCE’s 2025 closure of the Minsk Process confirmed that the old mediation format had ended before a fully tested peace existed.
International Law, Displacement And Political Trust
International law appears in two layers. The first is territorial: most states recognized Nagorno-Karabakh as part of Azerbaijan even when the region was governed by local Armenians. That rule favored Baku’s legal position, especially when Azerbaijan framed its operations as restoration of territorial integrity. The second layer is human: territorial sovereignty does not erase duties to protect civilians, allow safe return where applicable, prevent discrimination and preserve heritage.
The cases at the International Court of Justice show that second layer. Armenia and Azerbaijan filed cases against each other under the International Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination, a treaty that prohibits racial discrimination and gives the Court a basis for hearing disputes between state parties. The Court has addressed provisional measures, meaning urgent orders meant to preserve rights before a final judgment, and jurisdiction, but a final merits judgment takes time. These proceedings do not replace political negotiation, yet they create a legal record on prisoners, displaced people, hate speech, heritage and possible protection obligations. The initialed peace text would require the parties, after entry into force, to withdraw or settle interstate claims linked to the earlier dispute. That clause turns litigation into a bargaining issue rather than making the legal record disappear. The timing gap shapes the peace: sovereignty can change control of a region in a day, while legal accountability usually advances over years. During that interval, displaced people, detainees and cultural heritage depend on political guarantees before a final judgment exists.
Political trust is slower still. Armenia has to explain to its citizens why recognizing Azerbaijani territorial integrity does not mean accepting new pressure on Syunik or abandoning Nagorno-Karabakh’s displaced Armenians. Azerbaijan has to decide whether it wants peace based only on the adversary’s capitulation or a normalization that lowers the long-term military cost of control. Outside mediators can offer forums, maps, monitors and money. Trust will depend on repeated behavior at the border.
Conclusion
Armenia-Azerbaijan relations have entered a post-Nagorno-Karabakh phase. They have not entered a post-conflict phase. Azerbaijan won the military contest for the region and recovered territorial control. Armenia is trying to turn acceptance of recognized borders into state security, economic opening and minimum protection for displaced people. The gap between those goals explains why a peace text can exist before social and political peace.
The decisive issue is the move from force to rules. If border delimitation, transport routes, diplomatic relations and implementation mechanisms are treated as reciprocal commitments, Azerbaijan’s victory can be converted into a less unstable regional order. If they are treated as tools for extracting further concessions, the agreement will merely move tension from Nagorno-Karabakh to the Armenian border, Syunik and international legal forums. Durable peace depends less on a diplomatic ceremony than on preventing the map from being renegotiated by military pressure.