Armenia to cede more territory to Azerbaijan to avoid war
The Armenian PM Nikol Pashinyan has recently stated that his government will hand some territories in Armenia's north-east to Azerbaijan to avoid a new military confrontation and facilitate the peace process between the two South Caucasian countries. The territories in question are four uninhabited villages, lying entirely within Armenia's Tavush region but de jure belonging to Azerbaijan.
Before the 1990s, when Armenians and Azerbaijanis were caught in a bloody war over Nagorno-Karabakh, the four villages – Baghanis Ayrim, Lower Askipara, Kheyrimli, and Gizilhajili – were populated by Azerbaijanis and were part of Soviet Azerbaijan, despite sharing no land border with the country. After Armenia's military victory in the 1990s, the villages fell into Armenia's jurisdiction.
However, after the Second Nagorno-Karabakh War of 2020, the 2023 Azerbaijani offensive in Nagorno-Karabakh, and the dissolution of the self-proclaimed Republic of Artsakh, the status of these villages became central to the peace process between Armenia and Azerbaijan.
Armenia’s PM, thus, hopes to sign a lasting peace deal with Azerbaijan with these concessions. Pashinyan's policy of conceding land, however, has not been welcomed by all in Armenia. The country's opposition sees this concession as a strategic mistake and blames Pashinyan for serving against Armenia's national interests.