Fearing that the violence could spiral out of control, U.S. Secretary of State Antony J. Blinken recently took the unusual step of seeking to mediate the festering conflict between Armenia and Azerbaijan.
One analyst has called the longstanding and complicated Eurasian dispute the most serious armed struggle that many Americans have never heard of.
The two former Soviet republics in the South Caucasus have long disputed the landlocked region known as the Nagorno-Karabakh. It lies geographically within the borders of Azerbaijan but is mostly populated by ethnic Armenians and controlled by pro-Armenia separatists, who refer to it as Artsakh.
