The year-long negotiations between Armenia and Azerbaijan on a peace agreement have reached a critical moment. Since May, leaders and their representatives have regularly convened in various capitals worldwide. And today, delegates are due to begin several days of talks in Washington DC.
While some of those involved acknowledge progress, stating that almost half of the document has already been agreed, the path to a successful end remains distant. The main point of disagreement remains the lack of compromise on the key and most difficult issue – the fate of ethnic Armenians in Nagorno-Karabakh.
This issue has been a central element in the Armenian-Azerbaijan conflict, which has remained unresolved since the collapse of the Soviet Union. Nagorno-Karabakh is a small enclave populated by Armenians located within the territory of Azerbaijan. Following the war in the 1990s, the Armenian side emerged victorious and controlled territories extending more than twice the size of Soviet era boundaries of the region for over 25 years. After the defeat in the 2020 war, around 120,000 local Armenians reside in a much smaller territory patrolled by Russian peacekeepers. All the territories around the enclave are now controlled by Azerbaijan.
