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naraburns  nihil supernum  4mo ago (text post)   1211 thread views

Transnational Thursday for December 21, 2023

After thirty weeks as @Soriek's passion project, Transnational Thursday is getting added to the auto-post bot. But it hasn't been added to the bot yet, I think, so I'm posting it this week, with apologies to anyone whose plans I've mussed!

Transnational Thursday is a thread for people to discuss international news, foreign policy or international relations history. Feel free as well to drop in with coverage of countries you’re interested in, talk about ongoing dynamics like the wars in Israel or Ukraine, or even just whatever you’re reading.

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Armenia and Azerbaijan

Diplomatic normalization between the two fractious countries seems to be continuing, with both Armenia and Azerbaijan agreeing to their first ever prisoner exchange. They are also discussing withdrawing their respective troops from the border and are continuing to hold peace talks.

I was distracted lately by other events and did not follow Karabach matters that much, but do I understand it right that there wasn't a major fallout from this beyond Armenian population moving to the mainland Armenia? No mass casualties, no genocide attempts, the casualty numbers are relatively low. Pashinyan seems to be OK with taking the L and putting the matter to rest, and despite some protests, his position seems to be shared by the majority in Armenia - even if they are understandably not happy about it, they are willing, at least for now, to let it go. And if Aliev is content to not escalate it further, e.g. by cutting through Armenian territory to Nakhichivan, the matter could actually get settled?

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