The vote went ahead in spite of the global coronavirus outbreak; although Abkhazia hasn’t recorded any cases, election officials took pains that the disease couldn’t be spread by voting.
Afgan Mukhtarli was freed after nearly three years in prison. His rendering from Tbilisi drew attention to the clout that the authoritarian Azerbaijani government wielded in neighboring Georgia.
Armenia went farther than most of Iran’s neighbors, closing its border for two weeks. Azerbaijan, meanwhile, was the only country to have not closed its border with Iran at all.