Évolutions dans le Caucase — 13 septembre 2026
A quiet week with one procedural datum in it. On 9 September Azerbaijan's foreign minister, Jeyhun Bayramov, said the two governments have an agreement and a mutual understanding that border delimitation will begin at the harder northern sections, from the point where the Azerbaijani, Armenian and Georgian borders meet, and proceed north to south. That is a sequencing decision about method, and it is worth recording because the delimitation file has produced almost nothing since the dozen kilometres agreed in the Tavush direction in 2024 — but it is a decision about how to start, not a section started. Everything else held: the peace agreement is initialled and unsigned with the constitutional precondition unwithdrawn, nothing has been built on the Armenian section of the TRIPP route, no new instrument was recorded between Moscow and either Georgian entity, and no verified development appeared in the North Caucasus file.
L’évolution
Bakou et Erevan conviennent de l’endroit où commencer la délimitation, ce qui n’est pas la même chose que de commencer
Azerbaijan's Minister of Foreign Affairs, Jeyhun Bayramov, said on 9 September that there is an agreement and mutual understanding between Azerbaijan and Armenia that the delimitation of the state border will begin from the more difficult northern section, at the point where the borders of Azerbaijan, Armenia and Georgia intersect, and proceed from north to south. He said the two state commissions — headed on the Azerbaijani side by Deputy Prime Minister Shahin Mustafayev and on the Armenian side by a deputy prime minister — meet and hold discussions regularly, and referred to an upcoming meeting with his Armenian counterpart without giving a date. No joint statement, protocol or Armenian confirmation of the sequencing was identified in the window, and no new section of border has been delimited.
Why it matters. Since the commissions were created, one section has been delimited: about a dozen kilometres in the Tavush direction in 2024, with four villages transferred. The rest has been a process with a legal baseline — the 1991 Alma-Ata Declaration and the Soviet-era maps in force at the time — and no agreed order of work. A sequencing decision is therefore a real procedural step, and the choice it records is the interesting part: starting at the hardest sections rather than the easiest is the opposite of confidence-building by increments, and it is consistent with two governments that want the file finished rather than demonstrated. It is also, on its own, worth very little. Nothing has been surveyed, no section has been opened, no timetable exists, and the Armenian-administered enclaves — the hardest problem on the line, one of them astride Armenia's principal north–south road — are untouched. The standing question asks whether delimitation has extended beyond Tavush, and the answer this week is still no. The observable is a second delimited section with an agreed alignment, not a further statement about where one would begin.
Où cela s’inscrit
Ceci est la revue datée d’un conflit pour la semaine. L’édition transversale de la même semaine reprend les constats les plus importants de chaque conflit que suit Vigil. La situation permanente que cette revue met à jour est la couverture du Caucase. La façon dont Vigil attribue ses degrés de confiance, date ses affirmations et en cite les sources est exposée dans la méthodologie, et toute erreur constatée ultérieurement est consignée dans le journal des corrections.
Par e-mail Recevez par courriel les bulletins hebdomadaires de Vigil et ses nouvelles notes d’analyse. Ce qu’envoie Vigil Dispatch
← Bulletin Caucase précédent — 2026-09-06Bulletin Caucase suivant — 2026-09-20 Toutes les revues du Caucase Tous les bulletins hebdomadaires