Armenia has transferred four border villages to Azerbaijan, a significant step toward normalizing ties between the long-time rivals, the countries confirmed on Friday. The move marks a breakthrough toward achieving a comprehensive peace agreement after years of fruitless talks mediated by Russia and Western countries.

The Caucasus countries, both former Soviet republics, engaged in two wars in the 1990s and in 2020 over control of the breakaway region of Nagorno-Karabakh.

Armenia's security service confirmed on Friday that its border guards had taken up new positions in the eastern part of the country, under a recently brokered border demarcation deal that involves transferring the villages to Azerbaijan.
 
Separately, Azerbaijan's deputy prime minister, Shahin Mustafayev, announced that his country's border guards now "have control of the four settlements".

Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan agreed in March to transfer the four abandoned villages, which were under Armenian control in the 1990s, as part of efforts to secure a peace deal. In a televised statement Friday evening, he emphasized that stabilizing the border with Azerbaijan "is a crucial guarantee for the survival of the Armenian republic within its internationally recognized and legitimate boundaries."

In April, the Azerbaijani Foreign Ministry Spokesperson Aykhan Hajizada announced that Armenia has agreed to transfer to Azerbaijan four villages on their shared border. Hajizada wrote on X that the four villages had been occupied by Armenia since the beginning of the 1990s, calling their return a "long-awaited historic event."

Armenia's Foreign Ministry announced that the two nations have struck an initial agreement on four portions of their contested border. On the other hand, Azerbaijan stated that the restoration of the villages is a vital precondition for a peace agreement to end more than 30 years of strife between the two nations, both former Soviet Union members.