As a new border commission prepares to start work, it will have to reckon with persistent disagreements over what to do with a handful of quirks of Soviet border-drawing.
Armenia’s willingness to accept Azerbaijani control over Nagorno-Karabakh comes with an expectation that Baku will make reciprocal compromises. But there are little indications so far what those might be.
They say that the parliament is standing aside while the executive branch unilaterally makes consequential decisions about the future of Nagorno-Karabakh.
The president has reaffirmed the special place that the Russian language has in Azerbaijan even as a backlash against Russian culture has swept the rest of the world.
Many Armenians fear that the government is preparing to cede control over Nagorno-Karabakh and are demanding that their prime minister renounce such a concession.
If Armenians stay in Karabakh under the Azerbaijani flag, it would represent an exception to the otherwise zero-sum game of territorial control in the region.
One Armenian-populated village was evacuated and taken – at least temporarily – by Azerbaijani forces, as Russia criticized Baku for breaching the ceasefire.
