The signing of the Bishkek Protocol between Armenia and Azerbaijan effectively freezes the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict.
The Nagorno-Karabakh conflict is an ethnic and territorial conflict between Armenia and Azerbaijan over the disputed region of Nagorno-Karabakh, inhabited mostly by ethnic Armenians, and seven surrounding districts, inhabited mostly by Azerbaijanis until their evacuation in the First Nagorno-Karabakh War. Some of these territories are de facto controlled, and some are claimed by the breakaway Republic of Artsakh although they have been de jure internationally recognized as part of Azerbaijan. The conflict has its origins in the early 20th century, but the present conflict began in 1988, when the Karabakh Armenians demanded transferring Karabakh from Soviet Azerbaijan to Soviet Armenia. The conflict escalated into a full-scale war in the early 1990s which later transformed into a low-intensity conflict until four-day escalation in April 2016 and then into another full-scale war in 2020.
A ceasefire signed in 1994 in Bishkek was followed by two decades of relative stability, which significantly deteriorated along with Azerbaijan's increasing frustration with the status quo, at odds with Armenia's efforts to cement it. A four-day escalation in April 2016 became the deadliest ceasefire violation until the 2020 conflict. Tentative armistice was established by the tripartite ceasefire agreement on November 10, 2020, by which most of the territories lost by Azerbaijan during the First Nagorno-Karabakh war came under Azerbaijan's control. The president of Azerbaijan, Ilham Aliyev, claimed that the conflict has thus ended; however the ceasefire agreement was followed by the 2021 Armenia-Azerbaijan border crisis from May 2021 onwards, with continued casualties from both sides.
The Bishkek Protocol is a provisional ceasefire agreement, signed by the representatives of Armenia (Parliament Speaker Babken Ararktsian), the unrecognized Nagorno-Karabakh Republic (Parliament Speaker Karen Baburyan), Azerbaijan (First Deputy Parliament Speaker Afiyaddin Jalilov) and Russia's representative to the OSCE Minsk Group Vladimir Kazimirov on May 5, 1994 in Bishkek, the capital of Kyrgyzstan.