Clearing the landmines in Nagorno-Karabakh could take over a decade. It will prove to be an important step in the peace process.

The completion of a gold mine construction project on Armenia’s Amulsar mountain, headed by the multi-national company Lydian International, remains in serious doubt. Years of corruption, local protests, regime change and war with Azerbaijan have taken their toll on the massive initiative. Yet, the negative impact of the half-way completed mine has left the local community scarred.

Lydian International’s half a billion USD dollar goldmine on Armenia’s Amulsar mountain is the largest greenfield mining project ever financed in the country. Poised to be the leading goldmine to open globally in 2018, no gold has yet to be extracted. Nor is it expected that any gold will be mined anytime soon since Lydian entered bankruptcy litigation, is winding up its assets in Toronto, its Canadian headquarters, and was appointed liquidators. The project became marred by allegations of corruption and environmental negligence.

Ethnic cleansing, the abuse of civilians and prisoners of war, and cultural vandalism are well documented features of the wars over Nagorno-Karabakh.

Irrelevance of the West in the recent war between Armenia and Azerbaijan over Nagorno-Karabakh has turned the conflict into Turkey's and Russia's domain. Yet, despite far-reaching ambitions and unprecedented assistance which Turkey gave Azerbaijan during the last round of the conflict, it has been side-lined by Russia’s ambition to dominate the peacekeeping process in the break-away region.

Despite the fact that western governments – those of the United States and France – are co-responsible for supervising the resolution process of the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict, their response to the recent outbreak of hostilities had been, at best, ineffective. This vacuum has been filled by Russia, which has long sought to play the role of a major mediator in the conflict, and Turkey, a new entrant to the region that recently became determined to get more involved in the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict.

The history of inter-ethnic hostilities between Armenia and Azerbaijan is a long series of repeating pogroms, massacres and violence. The recent war in Nagorno-Karabakh, which has ended with a Russian-led ceasefire agreement, constitutes just one more chapter in this never-ending conflict.

Almost 30 years ago, on May 9th 1992, Armenian forces captured the Azerbaijan city of Shusha after a spectacular offensive. In a world without Twitter, the narrative about liberation and escaping the Azerbaijani army spread instantly. The story of the restoration of historical justice for Armenians deprived of their ancient lands for years covered the catastrophe of thousands of Azerbaijani families forced to flee the Nagorno-Karabakh. Two years later, a ceasefire was signed in Bishkek, yet the war did not end for good.

Incoming US President Joe Biden should re-engage US foreign policy in the South Caucasus in order to function as a balanced foreign policy actor between Armenia and Azerbaijan.

Following the revolution in 2018, Armenians were satisfied that they finally overcame a corrupt regime. After losing a war and experiencing democratic backsliding, the people who brought Pashinyan to power might be the ones bringing him down

A response to Anna Barseghyan's article on ‘The difference between Armenian and Azerbaijani lobbying activities in Europe’.

The success of Azerbaijan’s FK Qarabağ in Europe introduces the conflict in Nagorno-Karabakh to another stage.

The truce was announced on November 9th and aims to end the current round of hostilities in the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict zone which lasted for more than six weeks. This game-changing agreement, which will bring Russian peacekeepers to the break-away region, has caused protests and political upheaval in Armenia and celebrations in Azerbaijan.

The agreement to end the latest round of conflict in Nagorno-Karabakh has created a Russo-Turkish situational partnership in the South Caucasus. It comes at the expense of the sovereignty of both Armenia and Azerbaijan.

The current Belarusian transformation looks as if it could be having results similar to those of the 2018 Velvet Revolution in Armenia rather than of the 2013-2014 Revolution of Dignity in Ukraine. Yet, the pathological relationship of Moscow’s imperialism towards Russia’s Eastern Slavic “brotherly nations” can mean that Belarus’s future may, in the end, become more similar to Ukraine’s rather than Armenia’s present.

Ukraine and Belarus are two of the culturally and geographically closest nations of Europe. Their Eastern Slavic languages, major Christian-Orthodox churches and peculiar locations between Russia, on the one side, and the European Union (as well as NATO), on the other, are comparable and intertwined. Both are, on one level, very close to the also largely Orthodox and Eastern Slavic Russians.