It is over though, so you're a bit late.
You know Yugoslavia ? Well, the Caucasus is just the same thing, except it's 3 countries and a lot of minorities within them. What happened was that there were some ethnic tensions under the USSR between the Armenians and Azeris, so the central government took ownership of the disputed lands. We know what happened next, and as the USSR collapsed, all the dormant tensions flared back up. The Nagorno Karabakh region has a majority of Armenians, and is yet claimed by Azerbaijan. The first war established de-facto Armenian control over the region, but the Azeris came back with Turkish support a few years later, and invaded the region. Now most of it stands occupied by the Azeris, a lot of Armenians fled, thousands of Armenians were massacred with drones and artillery, and nothing was solved in the end, because you can be almost sure the Armenians will try to fight back one day. Oh and of course we let Turkey and their allies do their warcrimes in peace, because NATO never really stood for anything but US hegemony.
The war is over now, everyone signed a cease-fire on November 10. It started in late September, so was a pretty short war. It still killed at least 5000 people though. The Nagorno-Karabakh (aka Artsakh) region, which is where fighting took place, has been pretty violent since the 90s. It's hard to say if that has now ended.
To start with, Armenia and Azerbaijan are both states that split off of the Soviet Union in 1991. Azerbaijan has about 3x as many people as Armenia (10m vs. 3m), and also has some useful resources like oil. In the 90s, both countries fought a pretty long war over the Nagorna-Karabakh region. Its a small area in Western Azerbaijan, home to lots of different ethnic groups, but only about 100k people in total. The groups had been fighting about whether to join with Armenia, or become independent, at the USSR collapsed. Eventually, Armenia demanded that they unify, which turned the conflict into a full scale war. Even though Armenia is much smaller, and a bit poorer, than Azerbaijan, they won the 90s war pretty handily. My understanding is that the organization of the Azeri armies was really bad, and moral was low. After winning, Armenia partially annexed Nagorno-Karabakh. This was considered a major national embarrassment for Azerbaijan, and anti-Armenian sentiment has been strong since. Nagorno-Karabakh was never quite fully part of Armenia though, and low grade conflict has continued. A few soldiers, and sometimes civilians, will get shot be each side every year. It was a similar situation to the Korean DMZ. The other thing to know about the region is that it is mostly separated by mountains from the rest of Armenia, but there is a pass called the "Lachin corridor", with a big highway through it, to connect things up.
Today, Armenia's main ally is Russia. There is a giant Russian military base in central Armenia, and a treaty that commits Russia to defending core Armenian lands should they be invaded. Crucially, this treaty technically does not include the Nagorno-Karabakh region as part of "core Armenia", so Russia did not help Armenia in the war. However, letting its ally get beaten up has made Russia look kind of powerless. Armenia is also pretty friendly with Iran. On the other side, Azerbaijan is close to Turkey, I think because they are both pretty Islamic countries. Turkey said they were prepared to send troops to help, but I don't think they ever actually did. Also, Azerbaijan has recently been buying a lot of weapons from Israel. This is all kind of ironic, because Armenia is the "liberal democracy", whereas Azerbaijan is the "dictatorship".
In July of this year, there were a bunch of incidents along the borders in Nagorno-Karabakh. This may have been a result of Azeri preparations for invasion. Then, on September 27th, shit started going down. A bunch of Azerbaijan tanks moved into northern Nagorno-Karabakh in a surprise attack, but Armenia had some pretty good anti-tank weapons that took them out. After that, there was a lot of bombardment back and forth, with missiles, artillery, and drones. In particular, Azerbaijan's drones fucked up Armenian army units pretty badly. Many of these drones were Israeli "IAI Harop" models, a new weapon Israel has been testing. They're like a cruise missile, about 8 feet long, and can fly autonomously at low altitudes for many hours, looking for a target. Then, they dive down and explode. Since they are small and fly low, radar and traditional SAM weapons systems are useless, and the drones can go wherever they want. In a few cases, these drones snuck many miles past the Armenian lines, blowing up buses full of Armenian troops before they even got to the front.
In mid October, after trading fire for a while, the Azeri army attacked the southern part of Nagorno-Karabakh along its border with Iran. Some missiles and drones went over the border, but Iran stated neutral. The Azeris were able to get within artillery range of the Lachin corridor, which allowed them to cut off pretty much all of Nagorno-Karabakh. At that point, Armenia was beaten, and Russia helped negotiate a peace deal. Military causalities were pretty similar on each side, but this is considered a major defeat for Armenia since they were the defenders. A lot of Armenian people fled the region, and some have been violently forced out by Azerbaijan's troops (possibly involving beheadings). Overall, I think the war was very popular in Azerbaijan, since they see it as revenge for the defeat in the 90s. It has helped strengthen the position of their "president", who was in some hot water for torturing journalists and stuff. In Armenia, this war has made the current government look pretty bad, and they'll probably lose the next election.
A good way to stay on top of this stuff is the Radio War Nerd podcast. The hosts cover most current conflicts, and have good politics besides.
Thank you! This clears up so many of my questions. Also thanks for the podcast rec.
