A new situation emerged in the South Caucasus after the end of the 44-day Karabakh War in the autumn of 2020. The war took the lives of thousands of people on both sides. Its outcome determined some issues, left others unresolved, and created some new ones.
The Beijing 2022 Winter Olympics, scheduled to officially open in the first week of February against the backdrop of strict and tiresome anti-COVID measures, has become one of the international events that hijacked the world's political agenda.
Essentially, although Baku and Yerevan officially agree on the reopening of railways and highways, they disagree on whether there should be customs and border controls at their border crossings.
Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev’s statement that he is prepared to use force to ensure that a transit corridor opens between Azerbaijan proper and the Azerbaijani exclave of Nakhichevan opens as called for in the November 2020 declaration ending the 44-day war has sparked outrage in Armenia.
Meanwhile, international firms urged to leave UAE, officials say Iran will not accept interim nuclear deal, and call for details over proposed agreements with China and Russia.
Azerbaijan is “geopolitically critical” to the United States, argues the 1997 book, The Grand Chessboard, by Zbigniew Brzezinski, the national security advisor to former President Jimmy Carter. Counterbalancing Russia is a primary duty of the United States, and the mere placement of Azerbaijan on the map makes it a crucial partner in that effort.
According to recently published official data, more than 46,900 Armenian citizens took Russian citizenship last year, and a total of 153,800 Armenians got Russian passports and left the country in 2017-2021, which makes up about 5.2% of Armenia's population.
With all the trouble in the world today it is easy – as many have – to overlook the significance of the peace talks between President Aliyev of Azerbaijan and Prime Minister Pashinyan of Armenia which began in Brussels in December last year.
For the countries in Eastern Europe and the South Caucasus, the current crisis between the West and Russia over Ukraine along with the US-Russian dialogue on European security issues are of existential importance in terms of their independent statehood and sovereignty.
On October 6, 2021, Russia’s Minister of Foreign Affairs Sergei Lavrov met his Iranian counterpart Hossein Amir Abdollahian in Moscow to discuss regional security and economic cooperation, and to address important concerns regarding the crisis in the South Caucasus.
As tensions between Russia and Ukraine continued to rise, Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev flew to Kyiv ten days ago (January 14) to meet with his Ukrainian counterpart, Volodymyr Zelenskyy.
The first round of negotiations between the special representatives of Turkey and Armenia aimed at normalizing relations was held in Moscow, at the Russian Ministry of Foreign Affairs, on January 14. Signals regarding the results of the meeting from both sides were primarily positive.
Broken-backed but still wheezing and hissing furiously, the Armenian diaspora has launched a new wave of black PR against Azerbaijan.
In an interview with the German-language Zenit magazine, opposition Azerbaijani journalist Khadija Ismayilova said she had been in demand in the West when she criticized the Azerbaijani authorities, but they lost interest in her once she voiced her position on the Karabakh conflict.
Azerbaijan aims to transform itself into an “energy hub” exporting not only crude oil and natural gas but also electricity.
American negotiators and foreign policy experts who are skeptical that a deal can be reached should perhaps look at the recent spate of successful agreements between Iran and Azerbaijan—two countries that were only recently at each other’s throats but are now making significant progress towards achieving improved diplomatic relations and mutual material gains.
French politicians, especially the right-wing ones, will forget about Armenia immediately after the presidential election; they just need the votes of the Armenian diaspora right now, says Farid Shafiyev, Chairman of the Board of the Center for Analysis of International Relations.
January 12, 2022, witnessed another comprehensive and agenda-setting interview by the President of Azerbaijan, Mr. Ilham Aliyev, which he this time gave to local new agencies.
In early January, the sudden outbreak of massive anti-government protests in Kazakhstan and subsequent intervention by the Russia-led Collective Security Treaty Organization (CSTO) reverberated across the entire post-Soviet space, including Azerbaijan.
2021 was the year in which the status quo in South Caucasus changed. However, the resistance to the new situation continued.
This seemingly simple question is akin to Pandora's Box. All the more so in our troubled times of strange events that seemed unthinkable only a few years ago.
According to Kyiv newspapers, at the Eastern Partnership summit in Brussels on 15 December 2021, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy invited President of Azerbaijan Ilham Aliyev to come to Ukraine on a working visit.
As the two brotherly nations, bonded by the principle of 'one nation, two states,' celebrate 30 years since the resumption of diplomatic relations, Baku’s envoy pointed to the constructive influence the two countries have on the wider region.
Vladimir Putin has promised to provide the leaders of Armenia and Azerbaijan with Soviet military maps of the region, maps which he says are far more accurate than the larger scale maps that the two countries have relied upon in the past.
