The Nagorno-Karabakh conflict is one of the few protracted post-Soviet disputes that has actually been resolved, though not through diplomacy. The region — about 4,400 square kilometres of mountainous land in the southern Caucasus, populated for most of the 20th century by ethnic Armenians and internationally recognised as part of Azerbaijan — was the subject of two major wars (1988-1994 and 2020) and a final military campaign in September 2023 that produced the mass exodus of essentially the entire Armenian population. As of late 2024, Nagorno-Karabakh is under full Azerbaijani control, with no remaining Armenian residents. The territory has been formally reintegrated into Azerbaijan. The conflict is, in geopolitical terms, settled. The human consequences for the displaced Armenian population remain unresolved.
The Geography
Nagorno-Karabakh sits in the eastern foothills of the Lesser Caucasus mountain range, between Armenia to the west and the lower-lying portions of central Azerbaijan to the east. The terrain is dominated by north-south running mountain ridges with elevations between 1,000 and 3,000 metres, separated by river valleys flowing eastward toward the Kura-Aras lowlands. The territory is connected to the Republic of Armenia only by a narrow mountain pass — the Lachin corridor — through what was, until 2020, internationally recognised as part of Azerbaijan but had been controlled by Armenian forces since the first war. The capital of the former Armenian-controlled territory was Khankendi (Stepanakert in Armenian), a city of about 50,000 in central Nagorno-Karabakh. The largest other towns were Shusha (Shushi), Khojaly, and Martakert.
The Soviet Background
Nagorno-Karabakh was administratively defined as the Nagorno-Karabakh Autonomous Oblast within Soviet Azerbaijan from 1923 onwards. The population at the time of Soviet establishment was approximately 95 percent Armenian, with smaller Azerbaijani and other minorities. The decision to place the predominantly Armenian region inside the Azerbaijani SSR rather than the Armenian SSR was made by Soviet leadership in the 1920s, on grounds that have been the subject of considerable historical dispute. Armenian political pressure for transfer to Armenia was suppressed during the Soviet period but never fully eliminated. By the late 1980s, with Soviet central authority weakening under Gorbachev's reforms, the local Armenian leadership voted to request transfer to the Armenian SSR — a request that triggered the political crisis that became the first Nagorno-Karabakh war.
The First War (1988-1994)
The first Nagorno-Karabakh war began as inter-communal violence in 1988 and escalated through the late Soviet and early post-Soviet periods. By the time the Soviet Union dissolved in 1991, both Armenia and Azerbaijan were involved in a full-scale war in and around Nagorno-Karabakh. The conflict involved heavy weaponry left behind by the Soviet army, substantial casualties on both sides (estimates range from 20,000 to 40,000 dead), and the displacement of approximately 750,000 Azerbaijanis (from Nagorno-Karabakh and the surrounding districts) and about 500,000 Armenians (from elsewhere in Azerbaijan into Armenia and Nagorno-Karabakh). The war ended with an Armenian military victory: by the 1994 cease-fire, Armenian forces controlled not only Nagorno-Karabakh itself but also seven adjacent Azerbaijani districts that they had captured as a buffer zone. The cease-fire was an inconclusive halt rather than a peace agreement. No political settlement followed.
The Frozen Decades
From 1994 to 2020, Nagorno-Karabakh existed as the self-declared Republic of Artsakh — an Armenian-administered unrecognised state covering the original autonomous oblast plus the surrounding occupied districts. Artsakh had its own government, military, currency (the Armenian dram in practice), and political institutions. It was recognised by no UN member state, including Armenia itself, which maintained a careful position of supporting Artsakh without recognising it. The OSCE Minsk Group — co-chaired by Russia, France, and the United States — pursued various negotiation tracks toward a settlement that would have involved Armenian withdrawal from the occupied districts in exchange for a referendum on the eventual political status of Nagorno-Karabakh proper. The negotiations made periodic but never definitive progress over 25 years.
The Second War (2020)
Azerbaijan, having spent two decades of oil-and-gas revenues building up its military capabilities and importing modern weapons (particularly from Turkey, Israel, and Russia), launched a major offensive in September 2020. The 44-day war saw Azerbaijani forces — supported by Turkish-supplied drones, Israeli loitering munitions, and Pakistani-trained personnel — defeat the Armenian forces decisively. The Armenian air-defence systems were systematically destroyed by drones. Armenian armoured forces were knocked out. The Armenian-controlled occupied districts surrounding Nagorno-Karabakh proper were retaken almost entirely. The strategically important city of Shusha — overlooking Khankendi from a height — was captured in early November 2020. A Russian-mediated cease-fire on 9 November 2020 froze the front lines and inserted approximately 2,000 Russian peacekeepers along the new contact line and along the Lachin corridor connecting the remaining Armenian-controlled portion of Nagorno-Karabakh to Armenia proper. The 2020 war effectively ended the post-1994 status quo and substantially reduced the Armenian-controlled territory.
The 2023 Blockade and Exodus
The 2020 cease-fire left Nagorno-Karabakh with a substantially reduced territory of about 3,000 square kilometres, still administered by the Armenian Artsakh authorities, connected to Armenia by the Lachin corridor patrolled by Russian peacekeepers. The arrangement proved unsustainable. In December 2022 Azerbaijan began a partial blockade of the Lachin corridor; by mid-2023 the blockade was effectively complete, with food, fuel, and medicine increasingly difficult to bring into the enclave. On 19 September 2023, Azerbaijan launched a one-day military operation that the local Armenian authorities surrendered to within hours. Over the following two weeks essentially the entire ethnic Armenian population of Nagorno-Karabakh — approximately 100,000 people — fled westward into Armenia. The Republic of Artsakh formally dissolved itself on 1 January 2024. The territory is now empty of Armenians and is being administered directly by Azerbaijan.
The Population Question
The 2023 exodus was effectively complete. International observers, including UN representatives who visited Nagorno-Karabakh shortly after the operation, found virtually no remaining Armenian residents. The displaced population — approximately 100,000 — has been absorbed into Armenia, which has a total population of about 2.7 million, making the resettlement effort a substantial demographic and economic shock. Azerbaijani authorities have announced plans to resettle the territory with Azerbaijani families, particularly those displaced from Nagorno-Karabakh and the surrounding districts during the first war. Resettlement has been slow — infrastructure in Khankendi and surrounding areas had deteriorated substantially during the Artsakh period and requires substantial reconstruction. The Azerbaijani government has been heavily investing in roads, electricity, water supply, and other infrastructure to support the planned resettlement.
The Cultural Heritage Question
One of the persistent concerns of the international community since 2023 has been the fate of the Armenian cultural heritage in Nagorno-Karabakh — particularly the medieval Armenian Christian monasteries, including the famous Dadivank, Gandzasar, and the Amaras Monastery (where the Armenian alphabet was reputedly invented in the early 5th century). Azerbaijan has stated that it will preserve all religious sites regardless of their historical affiliation, though Armenian observers have raised concerns about Azerbaijani academic claims that some of the sites are actually "Caucasian Albanian" rather than Armenian — a position that Armenian and most Western scholars reject as a politically motivated reinterpretation. Whether the heritage will survive the territorial transition will depend substantially on developments over the coming years.
The Lachin Corridor
The most important physical feature of the post-2020 settlement was the Lachin corridor — a narrow 5-kilometre-wide strip of land connecting the remaining Armenian-controlled portion of Nagorno-Karabakh to the Republic of Armenia. The corridor passed through territory that Azerbaijan had retaken in 2020 but was governed under the cease-fire agreement to permit safe Armenian travel between Karabakh and Armenia. Russian peacekeepers were stationed along its length. The corridor became the chokepoint of the 2023 blockade: Azerbaijani authorities and Azerbaijani citizens conducting environmental protests progressively impeded transit through it, and eventually Azerbaijani security forces operated checkpoints that effectively cut off the territory. The blockade was the immediate prelude to the September 2023 military operation. With the exodus, the corridor lost its function, and the Russian peacekeepers (whose mandate had effectively been overtaken by events) progressively withdrew through 2024.
The Settlement
Azerbaijan and Armenia have been negotiating a formal peace treaty since 2022. The negotiations have made considerable progress — both governments have stated publicly that they accept each other's territorial integrity within Soviet-era borders, which means Armenia has formally accepted that Nagorno-Karabakh is part of Azerbaijan. The remaining disputed issues are mostly about specific border delineations in the South Caucasus mountain country between the two states and the question of transit routes through southern Armenia (the "Zangezur Corridor") that would connect Azerbaijan with its Nakhchivan exclave. The 2023 exodus removed what had been the largest single obstacle to a peace agreement; the agreement itself has not yet been formally signed but has been functionally in operation since late 2023. The Nagorno-Karabakh conflict, in the sense of an active political dispute between two recognised states, is over. The human consequences of the way it ended will continue to shape the South Caucasus for at least a generation.