Although there are potential security and economic benefits for Moscow to be gained from closer ties to Afghanistan, they will be difficult to achieve. 

Amid the war in Ukraine, Azerbaijan has become an essential partner for Russia when it comes to both energy exports, and keeping open a transport corridor to Iran.

The Kremlin’s options include attempting to organize a coup in Yerevan, or applying economic pressure. Neither is particularly likely.

Despite their bloody history and repeated recent disappointments, a long-term accommodation between Armenia and Azerbaijan is within reach.

Instead of Russian and Western drafts of a peace treaty, there will now only be one: Azerbaijan’s.

Any broader peace agreement between Armenia and Azerbaijan would signal the start of a new era in the South Caucasus. Russia’s influence would decline, and Turkey’s—grow.

Plentiful resources contribute to long-term success if channeled to the development of institutions, but Azerbaijan, like many other autocracies, is instead using them to burnish its image abroad and cement the status quo.

Relations with Russia will have to be overhauled, since the main subject of discussion—Karabakh—will disappear. For most Armenians, the Kremlin will be seen as an unreliable ally that abandoned them in their hour of need.

If the Europeans end up securing relative peace for Armenia and corroborate Azerbaijan’s border encroachments, it will be undeniable that Russia is not the only force Yerevan can rely on.

At some point, Moscow will have to have a serious conversation with Baku about reassessing the existing arrangements in Nagorno-Karabakh in Azerbaijan’s favor.