What's at stake for Nagorno-Karabakh as both sides in the decades-old conflict agree to hold talks

The announcement of a cease-fire in Nagorno-Karabakh, just a day after Azerbaijan launched heavy artillery fire against Armenian forces, toned down fears of a third full-scale war over the region in the southern Caucasus Mountains.

The announcement of a cease-fire in Nagorno-Karabakh, just a day after Azerbaijan launched heavy artillery fire against Armenian forces, toned down fears of a third full-scale war over the region in the southern Caucasus Mountains.

But it still leaves significant unresolved questions about the conflict.

Under the agreement mediated by Russian peacekeeping forces, Nagorno-Karabakh's separatist authorities made sizable concessions: disbanding the region's defence forces and withdrawing Armenia's military contingent. But the question of Nagorno-Karabakh's final status remains open and is to be at the centre of talks between the sides beginning Thursday.

Emotions and ethnic pride are intense on both the Azerbaijani and ethnic Armenian sides, with neither showing an inclination for compromise in the previous three decades of conflict that killed tens of thousands of soldiers and displaced hundreds of thousands of civilians.

Nagorno-Karabakh, with a population of about 120,000, is a mountainous, ethnic Armenian region inside the borders of Azerbaijan that has been a flashpoint since the collapse of the Soviet Union.

The region and sizable surrounding territories came under the control of ethnic Armenian forces backed by the Armenian military at the end of a separatist war in 1994. But Azerbaijan regained the territories and parts of Nagorno-Karabakh itself after six weeks of fighting in 2020. The area is recognized internationally as part of Azerbaijan.

The latter conflict ended with an agreement to deploy about 2,000 Russian peacekeepers there, but tensions have soared since December when Azerbaijan began blocking the Lachin Corridor -- the road that connects Nagorno-Karabakh with Armenia proper.