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The World Ahead | Europe in 2024

How the war in Ukraine is changing the Caucasus

Turkey and Azerbaijan hope to benefit from Russia’s betrayal of Armenia

A protester wearing the Armenian national flag stands in front of Russian peacekeepers blocking a road in Nagorno-Karabakh
Image: Getty Images

By Arkady Ostrovsky

Compared with Russia’s invasion of Ukraine or the horrors of Hamas’s attack on Israel and the ensuing conflict, the one-day war waged in September 2023 by Azerbaijan against its ethnic-Armenian enclave of Nagorno-Karabakh may seem like a blip. This final episode in a long cycle of violence between Azerbaijan and Armenia gave Azerbaijan control of a region that has wished to be separate from it since before the Soviet collapse, and prompted the exodus of most of the Armenian population.

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This article appeared in the Europe section of the print edition of The World Ahead 2024 under the headline “Russia’s waning influence”

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