Essentially, although Baku and Yerevan officially agree on the reopening of railways and highways, they disagree on whether there should be customs and border controls at their border crossings.

Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev’s statement that he is prepared to use force to ensure that a transit corridor opens between Azerbaijan proper and the Azerbaijani exclave of Nakhichevan opens as called for in the November 2020 declaration ending the 44-day war has sparked outrage in Armenia.

Meanwhile, international firms urged to leave UAE, officials say Iran will not accept interim nuclear deal, and call for details over proposed agreements with China and Russia.

Azerbaijan is “geopolitically critical” to the United States, argues the 1997 book, The Grand Chessboard, by Zbigniew Brzezinski, the national security advisor to former President Jimmy Carter. Counterbalancing Russia is a primary duty of the United States, and the mere placement of Azerbaijan on the map makes it a crucial partner in that effort.

According to recently published official data, more than 46,900 Armenian citizens took Russian citizenship last year, and a total of 153,800 Armenians got Russian passports and left the country in 2017-2021, which makes up about 5.2% of Armenia's population.

With all the trouble in the world today it is easy – as many have – to overlook the significance of the peace talks between President Aliyev of Azerbaijan and Prime Minister Pashinyan of Armenia which began in Brussels in December last year.

For the countries in Eastern Europe and the South Caucasus, the current crisis between the West and Russia over Ukraine along with the US-Russian dialogue on European security issues are of existential importance in terms of their independent statehood and sovereignty.

On October 6, 2021, Russia’s Minister of Foreign Affairs Sergei Lavrov met his Iranian counterpart Hossein Amir Abdollahian in Moscow to discuss regional security and economic cooperation, and to address important concerns regarding the crisis in the South Caucasus.

As tensions between Russia and Ukraine continued to rise, Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev flew to Kyiv ten days ago (January 14) to meet with his Ukrainian counterpart, Volodymyr Zelenskyy.