Armenia and Azerbaijan have taken a significant step toward normalizing relations after a bitter conflict over territory. On April 23, experts from both countries worked to demarcate their boundaries and placed the first border marker. The two nations are working toward a peace treaty after Azerbaijan regained full control of the Karabakh province, which had been under the control of ethnic Armenian forces since the 1990s. A six-week war in 2020 resulted in Azerbaijan retaking large parts of the breakaway region, and in September 2023, Azerbaijani forces launched a lightning blitz that forced Karabakh’s Armenian authorities to capitulate in negotiations mediated by Russian forces. Several days ago, Armenia and Azerbaijan reached an agreement over a stretch of border that would cut through four Armenian villages in the Tavush province, meaning that Armenia would cede some territory to Azerbaijan. Armenian and Azerbaijani authorities on April 23 announced that the first border marker was installed, though its exact location remains unclear. In Armenia, protests erupted, with demonstrators blocking roads in the northeastern region that the proposed border would run through, and setting up roadblocks along key routes elsewhere in the country. Despite these protests, Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev said that Baku and Yerevan were edging closer to a common understanding of what a peace agreement might look like. “We are close and maybe closer than ever before (to signing a peace agreement),” Mr. Aliyev said. Last month, Armenia’s Prime Minister emphasized the need to quickly define the border with Azerbaijan to avoid further hostilities. However, many residents of Armenia’s border regions have resisted the demarcation effort, seeing it as Azerbaijan’s encroachment on their territory. Earlier this month, Russia began withdrawing its forces from Karabakh, where they have been stationed as peacekeepers under a truce brokered by Moscow that ended the 2020 war. The peacekeepers’ duties included ensuring free passage on the sole road connecting Karabakh with Armenia, but Azerbaijan began blocking the road in late 2022, alleging that Armenians were using it for weapons shipments and to smuggle minerals. The Russian forces did not intervene, and after months of increasingly dire food and medicine shortages in Karabakh due to the blockade, Azerbaijan launched its offensive last year. After Azerbaijan regained full control of Karabakh, the vast majority of its nearly 120,000 population fled to Armenia, although Azerbaijan said they were welcome to stay and would ensure their human rights.
Border Marker Placed as Armenia and Azerbaijan Edge Closer to Peace Agreement
