Snap parliamentary elections, held on June 20, resulted in a decisive victory for incumbent Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinian’s Civil Contract party: with 53.91 percent of votes in favor, it will receive 71 out of the 107 seats in the National Assembly, fulfilling Pashinian’s declared... MORE

On June 1, 2021, Yerevan announced the suspension of the Armenian-Azerbaijani-Russian working group, which was established during the January 11 trilateral leaders’ summit and tasked with presenting action plans (including implementation schedules) to their governments regarding regional railroad and highway projects (see EDM, January 12). Mher... MORE

On June 12, Azerbaijan and Armenia, through the mediation of the US State Department and the Georgian government, made an exchange: Baku released 15 Armenian captives, and Yerevan handed over to Azerbaijan maps of minefields in one of the formerly occupied regions around Karabakh. The... MORE

Moscow’s call to reopen the transportation corridors in the South Caucasus that have been blocked for 25 years because of the Armenian-Azerbaijani war over Nagorno-Karabakh has sparked new tensions between those two countries and new concerns by others. They concern the way in which the... MORE

Among the most important developments since the end of last year’s fighting between Armenia and Azerbaijan has been the dramatic expansion in consultations and cooperation between Russia and Iran. This development reflects their common opposition to border changes, shared concern about the expansion of Turkish... MORE

In late April 2021, Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev laid the foundation for building an international airport in Zangilan District, as part of the national restoration process for Karabakh and the surrounding de-occupied regions (Abc.az, April 27). Speaking at the ceremony, Aliyev mentioned that the geographical... MORE

At the end of April, Minister Fahrettin Koca announced that the Ministry of Health had granted emergency use authorization in Turkey to Russia’s COVID-19 vaccine (Anadolu Agency, April 30).  Sputnik V became the third vaccine to receive such approval, after China’s Sinovac and the Pfizer-BioNTech... MORE

On May 17, Armenia’s caretaker prime minister, Nikol Pashinian, convened a Security Council meeting to discuss the latest tense developments on the Armenian-Azerbaijani border (see EDM, May 18; see below). In addressing the participants, he rejected rumors about the so-called Zangezur corridor (which would stretch... MORE

In mid-May 2021, the Karabakh conflict between Armenia and Azerbaijan began to take on a dangerous new dimension. In contrast to the last 25 years—when fighting between the two countries mainly took place on territory internationally recognized as Azerbaijan’s (with a notable exception last summer—see... MORE

The next meeting of the Intergovernmental Council of the Moscow-led Eurasian Economic Union (EEU) will be held in the central Russian city of Kazan, on April 29–30 (TASS, March 17). A key agenda item for the EEU member states may reportedly be to discuss the... MORE