Depending on whom you ask, last week’s meeting between Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan and Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev in Abu Dhabi was either a historic development or simply another routine step in the still-fragile peace process. In an interview with Slovak media prior to the talks last week, Azerbaijani presidential advisor Hikmet Hajiyev even claimed the conflict between the sides is now over.
The demise of the OSCE Minsk Group, an internationally mandated effort to mediate between Armenia and Azerbaijan, ends an era that spanned almost three decades. Cochaired by France, Russia, and the United States, it failed to achieve its goal amid rivalry between the co-chair countries themselves and disagreement between the parties.
Armenia is again gripped by a dramatic confrontation between its political and religious elites. Recent public attacks by Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan on Catholicos Karekin II, the head of the Armenian Apostolic Church, are the latest in a series of standoffs since 2018 that reflect a broader struggle between Armenia’s revolutionary present and its entrenched past. This comes a year after Karekin II approved of street protests led by one of his archbishops to force Pashinyan’s resignation. Pashinyan has accused the Catholicos of violating his vow of celibacy and fathering a child. These accusations are not new. They last surfaced in the Armenian media over a decade ago.
Ballots printed for the last ever direct presidential elections in Armenia © Onnik James Krikorian 2008 With parliamentary elections in Armenia just over a year away, opposition figures and some analysts are increasingly questioning Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan’s...
Upon visiting Karabakh in 1994, there were two possible routes for my return to Yerevan. The first was the same way I arrived by military helicopter, and the second was by road. With no highway in place at the time, that would take longer and prove more challenging.
Even though many believed a second Trump presidency was unlikely or even impossible, his re-election last November demonstrated how many people prefer to favour dreams over reality, transforming fears into self-fulfilling prophecies. This is a situation that can best describe how Track II diplomacy in the Armenia-Azerbaijan conflict has been conducted over time.
The Center of Analysis of International Relations has just published my latest on the continuing impasse and discussion on Baku’s demand to remove the current preamble to Armenia’s Constitution that I’ve been consistently covering since late January last year. This has also includes pieces mentioning attempts by various commentators in Armenia and Azerbaijan including AIR’s Farid Shafiyev.
On December 30, 2024, Russia’s Federal Security Service (FSB) border guards left Armenia’s Agarak border checkpoint with Iran at the end of December 2024. This follows the FSB border guard’s withdrawal from Yerevan’s Zvartnots Airport at the end of July 2024. The move had been anticipated by several pro-government activists in Armenia who had already called for their removal to cut off Russian access to the country’s Border Electronic Management Information System.
When I moved to Yerevan in October 1998, it was rare to hear much positive conversation about the future of Armenia or Karabakh. That had also been the case when I visited the country on a research trip earlier that June. Many were already tired of the conflict and few seemed enthused with a new regime that had just come to power after the ousting the country’s first president earlier that year.