Armenia Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan announced Tuesday that the country would likely have to concede four frontier villages to Azerbaijan and return to its Soviet-era borders as part of a push for peace. 

This comes as Pashinyan visited the border provinces of Tavush Marz, where he announced that Yerevan would do whatever was needed to prevent another war. Pashinyan told residents that a failure to concede on the disputed villages could lead to another war with Azerbaijan “by the end of the week.”

The Armenian armed forces have suffered a series of losses since the 2020 Second Nagorno-Karabakh War and the 2023 clash, which saw the dissolution of the Azeri-claimed Armenian majority territory of Nagorno-Karabakh, which Armenia has held since 1994. 

Armenia has traditionally depended upon Russia as its security broker in the Caucasus as part of the Moscow Collective Security Treaty Organisation. However, relations have become strained since the 2018 Armenian Revolution, which overthrew pro-Moscow President Serzh Sargsyan and swept Pashinyan into power. Pashinyan has since tried to pivot away from Moscow, which still has over 2,000 peacekeepers in Armenia, leading Russia to drop its security guarantees. In February, Armenia announced that it had frozen its participation in the Russian-led Collective Security Treaty Organisation because the bloc had failed the country. 

Jens Stoltenberg, in a statement on the Armenian-Azerbaijan crisis, stated that “NATO supports Armenian sovereignty and territorial integrity” but did not offer any guarantees against further Azeri incursions.