Azerbaijan began shelling positions across its border with Armenia last week, reigniting a longstanding conflict between the two countries.
Since the breakup of the Soviet Union, Armenia and Azerbaijan have fought multiple wars over the status of the Nagorno-Karabakh region, a primarily Armenian ethnic enclave within Azerbaijan that Armenia recognizes as a separate republic called Artsakh, and with which Armenia has long desired unification.
An Armenian victory in the early 1990s gave it control over Nagorno-Karabakh and a large corridor of Azerbaijani territory linking it to Armenia proper, but a war in 2020 resulted in a decisive Azeri victory that reestablished Azerbaijan’s control over the disputed territories.
The conflict between Armenia and Azerbaijan is only one part of a broader geopolitical contest, however.
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