Baku has presented the border crossing as a demonstration of how Karabakh Armenians can live peacefully under Azerbaijani rule. But no one is using it.
Azerbaijan is seeking to equate the rights of the Azerbaijanis who were displaced from Armenia to those of Karabakh Armenians. Yerevan isn't having it.
Armenians had been using the road to bypass a blockade on the main road, the Lachin Corridor. The move drew a rare rebuke from the Russian peacekeepers.
The U.S. and Russia have both made high-level contact with Armenian and Azerbaijani officials as the rhetoric from Baku is getting increasingly bellicose.
It was unclear on whose behalf the former secretary general, Anders Fogh Rasmussen, was visiting, and what it portended for Armenia’s geopolitical orientation.
Five were killed in the shootout, which occurred four days after the most public meeting yet between Azerbaijani and Karabakhi Armenian representatives.
Armenians declared victory in the case, but Azerbaijan already denies that it is blockading the road to Karabakh and it's not clear how the ruling will be enforced.
Baku appears to be retreating from the grand vision of a corridor connecting the Turkic world for the sake of a more local strategic goal: cementing control over Karabakh.
Dependent on outside aid and braced for renewed clashes with Azerbaijan, there are fears Karabakh Armenians might soon be forced out of the breakaway region for good.
Kyiv has long taken a pro-Azerbaijan position vis-a-vis the conflict with Armenia. Now officials say that Armenia and Russia are using the blockade to try to steal attention from Ukraine.
Azerbaijan's blockade of the Lachin Corridor comes as it accuses Armenia of dragging its feet over the fate of another critical route, the would-be Zangezur Corridor.
Armenia says the plan amounts to a territorial claim, while domestic critics say it is meant as a nationalist distraction to the country’s real problems.