KELBAJAR, Azerbaijan — The cars, trucks and vans jamming the mountain roads deep into the night on Saturday brimmed with all the possessions that the fleeing Armenians could rescue: upholstered furniture, livestock, glass doors.

As they left, many set their homes on fire, enveloping their exodus in acrid smoke and illuminating it in an orange glow. Near some of the burning houses stood older ruins: the remains of homes abandoned a quarter-century ago, when Azerbaijanis fled and Armenians moved into the region.

In the southern Caucasus Mountains at the border of Europe and Asia, this weekend was a turning point in a decades-long conflict between Armenia and Azerbaijan over isolated and mountainous lands that both sides believed rightfully were theirs. Back in the 1990s, it was the Azerbaijanis who were forced to leave. Now, it is the Armenians, a renewed tragedy for them and a triumph for their foes.

Under a Russia-brokered peace deal ending a six-week war that killed thousands, Azerbaijan on Sunday was set to take control of a swath of the breakaway, ethnic Armenian region of Nagorno-Karabakh, which is part of Azerbaijan under international law.

“How can I burn this?” said Ashot Khanesyan, a 53-year-old Armenian, referring to the home he had built and was about to desert in the town of Kelbajar. His neighbors had urged him to destroy the house, he said, but, “My conscience won’t let me.”

He was packing his chickens, tying up their feet with white string, but he said he would leave his potatoes behind.

The New York Times came to Armenian-controlled areas and to Baku, Azerbaijan’s capital, to document this pivotal moment for both sides in the conflict. The war has drawn in some of the region’s biggest international powers, with Turkey backing Azerbaijan and Russia struggling to stop the fighting in a region it once ruled.

Russian peacekeeping troops, overseeing the handover, rumbled into the district of Kelbajar on Friday aboard armored personnel carriers. They set up one of their observation posts at Dadivank, a centuries-old monastery that Armenians, who are mainly Christian, fear the arriving Azerbaijanis, who are mainly Muslim, will deface.

“When an Armenian is born, they all know about Artsakh,” said Vergine Vartanyan, 24, in tears, using the Armenian term for Nagorno-Karabakh. Along with hundreds of other Armenians, she prayed at Dadivank for what could be the last time on Friday, to bid farewell.

The contrast with the scenes in Baku, the capital of Azerbaijan, could hardly be sharper. There, celebratory flags graced almost every surface, hanging from balconies, draped over car roofs and windows and wrapped around the shoulders of a teenager at the Martyrs’ Alley cemetery on a hillside overlooking the Caspian Sea.

Much of Azerbaijan exploded in joyous celebration in the streets on Tuesday after President Ilham Aliyev announced in the early hours of the morning that the war was over and that Armenian forces would withdraw from three districts adjacent to Nagorno-Karabakh and return them to Azerbaijani control.

Armenians and Azerbaijanis lived side by side when both countries were part of the Soviet Union, but century-old ethnic enmity reignited when communism collapsed. Nagorno-Karabakh, mainly ethnic Armenian, ended up as part of Azerbaijan. Armenia won a war over the territory in the early 1990s that killed some 20,000 people and displaced a million, mostly Azerbaijanis.

Azerbaijanis were expelled not only from Nagorno-Karabakh itself but also from seven surrounding districts, including Kelbajar, that had been mostly inhabited by Azerbaijanis. The entire region became the internationally unrecognized, ethnic Armenian Nagorno-Karabakh Republic. Azerbaijan’s desire to return its citizens who had been displaced from their homes became a driving force in its politics.

A quarter-century of on-and-off talks failed to resolve the standoff, and on Sept. 27, President Ilham Aliyev of Azerbaijan launched an offensive to retake the territory by force. Advanced drones, funded by Azerbaijan’s oil and gas boom, pounded the Armenians in their trenches. At least 2,317 Armenian soldiers died; Azerbaijan has not released a death toll.

As Azerbaijan’s forces in early November approached the fortress city of Shusha — a place steeped in history and symbolism for both countries — Azerbaijanis barely slept, watching the state television channel for news.

“We were all crying,” said Teymur, 37, recalling the moment when Mr. Aliyev announced that Azerbaijan had taken Shusha. He said he had watched the announcement with his aunt in their one-room apartment, as neighbors poured in to congratulate. Many of them, like his family, are from Shusha. He asked that his surname not to be published to preserve the family’s privacy.

“It is the end of longing and living bad times,” he said. “When you are a displaced person, and when you are longing for that place and you cannot visit it, that place becomes more than just a stone or mountain, it becomes like a beloved person. You want to kiss it, and lie down on it and feel the energy from the earth.”

Nearly a million people were uprooted by the first war between the two in the 1990s and were resettled in towns and settlements across Azerbaijan. Many of the families still live in cramped apartments in and around Baku, and their happiness at the promise of return was tempered with grief.

“We are so happy, but many of our young died in that place,” Elnare Mamedova, 48, said of the recent fighting in and around Nagorno-Karabakh. “All the bodies are coming back now.”

She opened a photograph on her phone of her neighbor’s son, a soldier in the hospital with a bullet wound to the head. “He’s been in a coma for 40 days,” she said. Another neighbor’s son was missing, she said. “We don’t know where he is, maybe he is captured.”

It was far from clear when displaced Azerbaijanis would be able to return. Mr. Aliyev has promised to rebuild infrastructure and to rid the region of land mines before allowing families to move back.

On Saturday, in the hectic hours before they thought Azerbaijan was set to take control of the Kelbajar district (the deadline to leave was extended for 10 days on Sunday), the departing Armenians appeared determined to make resettling the area as difficult as possible. They knocked down power lines and disassembled restaurants and gas stations. Men with chain saws fanned out across the roadside, stuffing freshly cut logs into vans and truck beds.

“Let them die from the cold,” said one man, who had arrived from Armenia, collecting the logs.

In a bank in Kelbajar on Friday, an employee was breaking down the interior walls with a large mallet, while workers carried everything that moved — windows, desks, doors — into a truck. At the police station, officers were having a farewell bottle of vodka, while a three-foot-tall white cone of burning documents smoldered in the back.

“These were always Armenian lands!” one police officer yelled when asked who had lived in Kelbajar before.

One of the few people staying in the Kelbajar District was Hovhannes Hovhannisyan, the abbott of the Dadivank monastery. When he arrived with the Armenian soldiers who took control of the area in 1993, they found that the graceful mountainside monastery had been converted to a cattle yard, he said.

Hundreds of Armenians crowded the monastery grounds on Friday for one last prayer; many brought their children to be baptized. Some of the monastery’s unique, carved-stone steles, known as khachkars, were set on wooden pallets, apparently to be removed. Suddenly, down below, the monastery guard’s home burst into flames.

“I told him not to touch it!” Abbott Hovhannisyan exclaimed, referring to the guard, who had apparently ignored his entreaty.

In Yerevan, the capital of Armenia, tensions ran high in recent days as protesters accused Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan of treason for acceding to the peace deal. Mr. Pashinyan and defense officials said that Armenia, outmatched on the battlefield, had no choice — a statement that came as a shock to a country, and a global diaspora, that had united in patriotic support of the war effort.

“They said we were winning, we were winning, and then suddenly it turned out we weren’t winning,” said Karine Terteryan, 43, crying next to the opera house in central Yerevan after police officers in balaclavas detained scores of protesters. “This is treason.”

On the central Republic Square in Yerevan, a giant screen broadcast cellphone videos shot by Armenian soldiers. One threatened vengeance against Azerbaijanis.

“For every broken window, for every broken house, we will enter your homes,” the soldier said, his voice echoing across the square. “You won’t be able to sleep calmly.”

Nearly 2,000 Russian forces will patrol the line between Azerbaijani- and Armenian-controlled regions for at least five years, under the deal brokered by President Vladimir V. Putin last week. The deal reasserted Russian influence in the formerly Soviet southern Caucasus, and the Russians’ arrival was largely welcomed by those ethnic Armenians who said they planned to stay in the section of Nagorno-Karabakh that remains under Armenian control.

But even amid the heartbreak, some older Armenians recalled wistfully the days when they lived with Azerbaijanis as friends and neighbors — a still relatively recent past now impossible to imagine for younger generations. Igor Badalyan, 53, an Armenian who fled his hometown, Baku, a quarter-century ago, said it was politicians, not regular people, who were to blame for the conflict.

“The people fight each other like dogs baited against each other,” he said, visiting Dadivank on Friday with his wife and collecting stones and earth in farewell. “It is sad that it happened this way. We didn’t want it to be this way.”

A steady stream of videos depicting shocking atrocities by Azerbaijani soldiers against Armenian civilians and prisoners of war has emerged on social media.

The videos, shot by soldiers and distributed on various Telegram news channels, depict a wide variety of torture, humiliations and mutilations of corpses. There have been several executions of captives shown, and at least two live beheadings.

The authenticity of most of the videos has yet to be confirmed, and the Azerbaijani government has promised to prosecute all such crimes. In a November 21 statement, the state prosecutor’s office announced it was opening a criminal case to investigate reports of “insulting the bodies of Armenian servicemen killed during the fighting for the liberation of our lands, as well as inhumane treatment of captured Armenian servicemen.”

“The perpetrators of such illegal acts will be identified and brought to justice,” it continued. It added, however, that according to initial investigations “many videos were found to be fake.”

A spokesperson for the prosecutor’s office, Kanan Zeynalov, told Eurasianet on December 8 that the investigations were continuing. “It is too early to say anything today,” Zeynalov said.

International human rights groups also are investigating. Human Rights Watch issued a report on December 2 on humiliations of captured Armenian soldiers, but it has not yet addressed the more serious atrocities. “Extrajudicial executions and despoiling dead are separate war crimes and we are still looking into it. It's complicated, as it's hard to verify the videos,” the organization’s associate director for Europe and Central Asia, Giorgi Gogia, told Eurasianet.

A smaller number of videos have emerged showing apparent Armenian atrocities against Azerbaijanis, including at least one execution. The Armenian authorities have not yet announced any criminal investigations into the reports. Gogia said Human Rights Watch also is investigating reports of Armenian atrocities against Azerbaijanis.

The steady drip of the videos has traumatized Armenians already reeling from their crushing loss in the 44-day war, in which Azerbaijan managed to take back a large part of the territories that it had lost in the last major war between the two sides in the 1990s.

“The videos of atrocities committed by the Azerbaijani armed forces against Armenian servicemen, as well as the mutilation of the bodies and photos circulating on social media, deepen the anxiety of family members [of current prisoners], the anxiety over the return of their relatives,” a group of Armenian civil society groups wrote in a December 3 letter to the United Nations Commission on Human Rights.

The issue is being hotly discussed in Azerbaijan, especially following the release of the second live beheading video on December 7.

A large number of Azerbaijanis refuse to believe the videos are real and believe they are part of a negative PR campaign.

One prominent political analyst, Arastun Orujlu, wrote on Facebook that “personally, I am convinced that these videos are fake,” part of a Russian-orchestrated campaign to discredit Azerbaijan. "It is an attempt to portray the victorious army of Azerbaijan to the world like a criminal gang. We must do our best to prevent this," he wrote.

Many other Azerbaijanis have been skeptical of the government’s sincerity in its promise to appropriately prosecute the crimes and have demanded accountability in the process.

A group of civil society activists issued a statement calling on Azerbaijani prosecutors “treat the images on social media as a violation of international humanitarian law” while also asking the international community to pressure Armenia to do the same.

“I have never said that the Interior Ministry or the State Security Service should arrest anyone. But this is already a red line,” wrote activist Ilkin Rustamzada on Facebook. “Anyone who films an Armenian being beheaded, or beheads him, should be severely punished. Anyone who puts an ISIS brand on the nation’s war has to be punished.”

One local NGO, the Baku Human Rights Club, is collecting videos of atrocities from both sides and is working with international partners to help authenticate them. “If [a video] isn’t authentic then we need to know that it’s not authentic,” the group’s chairman, Rasul Jafarov, told Eurasianet. “But if it is real, the prosecutor’s office opened a criminal case, the videos need to be analyzed as part of that criminal case and those found guilty should be brought to justice.”

Given the large number of videos that have emerged, and the fact that soldiers apparently felt comfortable enough to show off the atrocities, some analysts have said that the behavior was at least implicitly condoned by the authorities.

“These are widespread, consistent and systematic war crimes, tolerated or even encouraged by commanders,” wrote Ryan O’Farrell, an independent military analyst who has closely followed open sources on this conflict, on Twitter.

“[B]etween the number of videos, their frequency and the number of participants, it's impossible to not assume that the Azerbaijani state has given its tacit approval to these war crimes. These aren't ‘bad apples.’ This is systematic,” O’Farrell added. “I'll believe otherwise when the Azerbaijani government arrests the hundreds of soldiers who proudly filmed their participation in executions, torture, beheadings and mutilations of civilians and PO Ws.”

Some Azerbaijani analysts disagree.

“In order to protect the positive image of the country, the perpetrators need to be found and punished,” Fuad Shahbaz, a political and military analyst, told Eurasianet. “Some foreign experts are skeptical, but I think that servicemen who took part in these videos will be punished. It may not be in two days, ten days, 20 days, but I think it will happen.”

Still other Azerbaijanis have cheered the abuse of Armenians. Elvin Basqalli, a news presenter at the Azerbaijani network Space TV, wrote on Facebook that Armenians deserved revenge after crimes against Azerbaijanis, citing the Khojaly massacre of the first Karabakh war and the bombing of civilian targets in Ganja and Barda in this war.

“I appreciate such treatment of Armenians,” Basqalli wrote. “If the Armenians had known at the time that they would be beheaded, they would not have committed such tragedies.” Other Azerbaijanis objected and called for him to be fired from his post, but as of the time this piece was posted he remained in his job.

Russia, Azerbaijan and Armenia reached an agreement to unblock transport communications in the region after the recent end of the second Karabakh war.

Many in neighbouring Georgia fear that the country will be left out of the game in the region. However, professor at the Georgian Institute of Public Affairs Tornike Sharashenidze believes that many fears are not justified.

But in order to preserve its function, Georgia should be more actively involved in infrastructure development. Much has changed in the region since the last war in Karabakh. In particular, the issue of restoring transport lines through Azerbaijan and Armenia was on the agenda, which may lead to a decrease in the transit role of Georgia.

On January 11, at a meeting between Putin, Aliyev and Pashinyan, the opening of a transport corridor from the main territory of Azerbaijan through Armenia to Nakhichevan (Azerbaijani exclave) was officially formalized.

The possibility of joining Yerevan to this corridor by rail is also being considered. Thus, if this corridor is developed, the main territory of Azerbaijan will be connected with Turkey, and Armenia will be connected with Russia through Azerbaijan.

What is changing for Georgia?

At first glance, this does indeed limit Georgia’s transit role. There is nothing permanent in this world, and sooner or later the transport (almost) monopoly that our country had in the region had to end someday. However, due to its geographic location and good relations with its Caucasian neighbors, Georgia still has many advantages.

Let’s start with the fact that it takes time to activate the aforementioned transport lines (they functioned back in the USSR). The main territory of Azerbaijan is likely to be connected with Nakhichevan in the near future, but it is unlikely that this one line will fully satisfy the Turkish-Azerbaijani bilateral trade and transport needs. Also, the question is how smoothly and quickly the railway will work, connecting the ‘two Azerbaijans’ through the territory of Armenia. Most likely, Armenia will inevitably hold up trains at its border for inspection, which will make this route not very convenient.

It will be even more difficult with the new Armenian-Russian corridor.

Firstly, a branch line from Yerevan is being reconstructed here, which actually no longer exists. Added to this is the fact that trains going from Armenia to Russia (and vice versa) must pass through a rather large territory of Azerbaijan.

Assuming security is not an issue, the movement of the trains is likely to slow down: the route is long and includes three countries, including Azerbaijan, which is hostile to Armenia and which will also detain Armenian trains at its border. Considering all this, an easier way for Armenia to enter Russia may be through Georgia.

What problems does the transit corridor through Georgia face?

Nevertheless, given the current situation, it really makes sense for Georgia to think about creating new lines connecting Russia and Georgia. Moreover, traffic through Upper Lars (the only land route connecting today Armenia and Russia through Georgia) will still remain a big problem – traffic here in bad weather is seriously hampered. Congestion often occurs during other seasons. Discussion of this issue in our country often causes panic, because any new way of communication between Georgia and Russia is perceived as the possibility of new aggression.

However, given that the Russian military base is located 40 kilometers from Tbilisi, practically on the main highway, this panic is clearly unfounded – Russia does not need a new road for aggression against Georgia. In Soviet times, the easiest and shortest route for Russia to Armenia was the railway through Georgia.

The Abkhaz section of this railway has been closed for almost 30 years for obvious reasons. The question of its restoration has been raised several times (even before the 2008 war), but Tbilisi has always treated this issue with caution, and there are many reasons for this.

First, the opening of this railway corridor and the facilitation of communication between Russia and Armenia meant for Tbilisi a deterioration in relations with Azerbaijan and Turkey, because it would be easier for Russia to supply its military base in Gyumri along this line.

Today, given the consequences of the recent Karabakh war, there is practically no such threat. However, other threats have not disappeared: in particular, along this road Russia will get access to Iran, which will not particularly please Georgia’s friends in Washington.

There is one more serious problem for Georgia: without solving the problem of Abkhazia, it is difficult to imagine a railway route from Armenia to Russia through Georgia. Under the occupation of Tbilisi, it will be difficult to convince Moscow that the train from Moscow to Yerevan will have to stop at border control at Psou [ed. the border between Russia and Abkhazia, which Russia does not recognize as the state border of Georgia], and not at Inguri to check the border.

As mentioned, rebuilding and putting into operation these two rail lines will take time.

Accordingly, Georgia’s task is to further develop and expand land infrastructure in order to make the country even more attractive and competitive. First of all, this is a continuation and completion of the construction of the main highway and, most importantly, the section on the Rikoti Pass.

The sea is an indisputable advantage of Georgia. Obviously, speaking of land communications, one should not forget that Georgia has a huge advantage over Armenia and Azerbaijan in terms of access to the sea. If cargo from the same port of Poti can be easily delivered to Armenia and Azerbaijan, this means that Georgia will retain a significant transit function regardless of how the rehabilitated railroad tracks work.

For this, in addition to completing the highway, it will be necessary to expand the port of Poti, and in the future it really makes sense to think about building a new port (at least the same Anaklia).

New reality and energy corridors

As for energy corridors, the status quo created by the recent war in Karabakh does not change the situation in this direction. There were concerns that new pipelines would be built from Azerbaijan to Turkey, which would put Georgia out of the game. This fear is completely unfounded.

Let’s start with the fact that the construction of a pipeline requires huge costs, and it is not clear why Baku and Ankara should bear these costs, when the Azerbaijani-Georgian-Turkish pipelines have long been working without problems. In addition, this time Azerbaijan will have to go to Turkey through another country. This country will be Armenia … In short, there is no need to seriously discuss this. On the whole, Georgia should be interested in peace and stability in the region.

Georgia is a country that is heavily dependent on transit and tourism. Therefore, if we discard the moral arguments, even from a purely pragmatic point of view, in the end Georgia will only benefit if Baku and Yerevan regulate relations at some level. Regardless of what income may be lost now, in the end, a peaceful South Caucasus means definitely more regional projects and more development in general.

The author of the article is Tornike Shdzarashenidze, professor at the Georgian Institute of Public Affairs (GIPA).

Turkey and Russia have opened a joint military facility in Azerbaijan to help monitor the ceasefire with Armenia, a stark indicator of the shifting geopolitics in the region.

The center formally opened on January 30, near the village of Giyameddinli in the Aghdam region. Staffed by an equal number of Russian and Turkish troops – 60 on each side – it is novel in a number of ways. It represents the first formal Turkish military presence in the Caucasus in more than a century, and the first Russian military presence on Azerbaijani-controlled territory since Baku effectively kicked the Russians out of a radar facility in Gabala eight years ago. It also is a rare case of direct military cooperation between the two historical foes who have lately become custodians of a shaky security condominium in their shared neighborhood.

Official information about the center’s precise mission is scarce. But according to a dispatch from the center in the Russian newspaper Izvestiya, the primary mission appears to be as a base for surveillance drones to monitor the new ceasefire lines between Armenian and Azerbaijani forces. The Russian troops use Orlan-10 and Forpost drones; the Turks use Bayraktars. The intelligence is used to support the 2,000-strong Russian peacekeeping contingent that operates on the territory in Nagorno-Karabakh that Armenian forces still control.

The two contingents appear to work in parallel, and there is no single commander: each side has its own general in command. Even the formal name of the center avoids favoring one side over the other. In Turkish, it is called the “Turkish-Russian Joint Center,” while in Russian the proper names are the other way around: “Joint Russian-Turkish Center.”

“Information from the drone reaches the headquarters of the Russian contingent, where it is processed and transmitted to the monitoring center,” Izvestiya’s source, one Colonel Zavalkin, reported. (He didn’t report on how the Turkish drone operations worked, and there don’t appear to have been any comparable dispatches from Turkish reporters.) “There, service members of the two countries jointly serve round-the-clock.”

“The monitoring center decides how to react when the ceasefire is violated,” Colonel Zavalkin continued. “This is where the authority of the center is the broadest. It can pass the information on to the command of the Russian peacekeepers or by direct line to the defense structures of Armenia and Azerbaijan.”

The operational role of the center appears secondary, however – Russian drones were already monitoring the ceasefire, and the addition of Turkish forces is unlikely to cardinally improve that capability. The significance appears to be more about the emerging regional politics around the Caucasus.

The center was born out of the November 10 ceasefire statement that ended the 44-day war between Armenia and Azerbaijan, which resulted in Azerbaijan winning back most of the land it had lost to Armenians in the first war between the two sides in the 1990s.

The original ceasefire statement – signed by Russia, Armenia, and Azerbaijan – did not stipulate the creation of this center, or for that matter any role for Turkey at all. In that agreement, the Russian peacekeeping force has the sole responsibility for monitoring compliance. But following the signing of that deal, Russia and Turkey negotiated bilaterally to set up this center, signing an agreement on December 1. The structure itself was constructed by Azerbaijan.

The diplomacy that led to the agreement was opaque but it’s obvious that of all the interested parties, Azerbaijan and Turkey were by far the most desirous of the center, with Russia not nearly as enthusiastic and Armenia even less so.

Azerbaijan got substantial support, both militarily and politically, from Turkey during the war and the two countries’ relations are now as warm as they have ever been. Baku especially has sought to deepen its ties with Ankara in the aftermath of the war and sees Turkey as a means of balancing out a newly reinvigorated but potentially pro-Armenia Russian influence in the region.

There appear to have been three main drivers for the center’s creation, said Hasan Selim Özertem, an Ankara-based analyst of Turkey and the Caucasus. “First, after supporting Azerbaijan during the war, Turkey seems to be interested in keeping a foothold in the region as a show of power projection,” Özertem told Eurasianet.

“Second, Azerbaijan wants to keep Turkey in the equation to balance Russia,” Özertem said. And finally, the joint operation helps Russia and Turkey sideline outside actors: “So, Turkey gains leverage in international politics, particularly against the West, as a factor in the region that cannot be ignored, while also establishing a link with Moscow,” he said.

Azerbaijan’s favoring of Turkey was made clear in the twin press releases put out by the Azerbaijani defense ministry describing parallel talks at the center’s opening on January 30 with the military leadership of Russia and Turkey. The two releases repeated much of the same language word-for-word, but one praised “the eternity and inviolability of the Azerbaijani-Turkish brotherhood” – a level of effusion entirely missing from the description of Russian-Azerbaijani ties. And Turkish Deputy Defense Minister Yunus Emre Karosmanoğlu reportedly “congratulated the Azerbaijani people on the victory in the Patriotic War, wished the mercy of Allah Almighty to the souls of all servicemen and civilians who died as Shehid [martyrs] and healing to the wounded.” His Russian counterpart, Colonel General Alexander Fomin, did not offer any similar sentiment.

Russian officials, meanwhile, have tended to downplay the significance of the new center. “This is a stabilizing factor, but I wouldn’t call it an element of a long-term policy or create any conspiracy theories here,” Dmitriy Medvedev, the deputy chairman of the national security council, told journalists on February 1. “We just need to recognize the reality in our region, that today we need to discuss this issue with our partners in Turkey.”

That new order was also noticed, ruefully, among Armenians. “What does this Russian-Turkish monitoring group mean? One simple thing: Russia is continuing its policy of bypassing the Minsk Group,” said political analyst Stepan Grigoryan, in an interview with Armenian news site 1in.am, referring to the diplomatic body led by Russia, France, and the United States which used to broker negotiations between Armenia and Azerbaijan but which has been sidelined since last year’s war.

Grigoryan was asked why Armenia allowed the creation of the center. “No one asked us,” he said. “It is clear that our opinion was ignored.”

TBILISI, Georgia — It’s not a political endgame story you usually hear: A prime minister resigning to stop his own officials from executing a decision he disagreed with.

But that is, in effect, what Georgia’s prime minister, Giorgi Gakharia, did earlier this week.

A plan by the interior ministry to arrest Georgia’s main opposition leader posed “unacceptable” risks, he said, at a time when the country was already deeply polarized and busy fighting the coronavirus pandemic. The only power move he had left, Gakharia said, was to stand down.

Here’s what you need to know about the situation, how we got here and what it means.

What happened?

A Tbilisi court on Wednesday ordered the arrest of opposition leader Nika Melia, provoking an outcry among opposition groups and expressions of concern from some Western allies.

Melia, the chair of the United National Movement (UNM), has been leading a boycott against parliament for several months. The standoff stems from an ongoing dispute over parliamentary elections held in October, which the opposition says were rigged. The ruling party, Georgian Dream, denies the claim.

With police special forces on standby to detain Melia, who was barricaded inside his party headquarters, Gakharia on Thursday made a surprise decision to resign, citing disagreements with members of his party over the arrest and warning against a dangerous escalation.

The prime minister said he hoped his decision would “contribute to reducing polarization in our country.”

And, in the immediate aftermath, it did: Soon after the resignation, the interior ministry announced it had “temporarily postponed” Melia’s arrest, calling off the police unit.

Afterward, the opposition leader praised his erstwhile opponent’s decision, saying Gakharia’s decision to stand down was an admission “that there would have been bloodshed and violence.”

The U.S. embassy in Tbilisi praised all sides for showing “restraint.”

What’s the backstory?

The arrest warrant issued for Melia — ostensibly for violating bail conditions — is related to a case against him dating back to June 2019.

The government accused Melia of encouraging protesters to break into parliament during anti-government protests that erupted in response to the invitation of a Russian MP to the Georgian parliament. A heavy-handed police response left more than 200 people injured, with some losing their eyes to rubber bullets.

Melia was later released after posting bail, but government prosecutors went after him again after he ripped off his monitoring bracelet in protest against October’s parliamentary elections.

The backdrop of the entire political drama is the deeply divisive question of the country’s relationship to Russia.

After regaining its independence in the early 1990s, Georgia enthusiastically embraced the West, becoming Washington’s darling in the region. (The main road from the airport in Tbilisi is still called George W. Bush street, in tribute to a visit by the former U.S. president.)

But a brief war with Russia in 2008, which saw Russia occupy a fifth of Georgia’s territory, marked a turning point in Georgia’s pro-Western ambitions, denting its hopes of joining NATO.

It also helped pave the way for the current ruling party, Georgian Dream, to win elections in 2012, relegating UNM and other staunchly pro-Western parties to the opposition.

For years, opposition leaders have loudly complained that the country has veered off course. They place the blame for this squarely on Georgian Dream’s billionaire founder, Bidzina Ivanishvili, whom they accuse of running the country from behind the scenes and cozying up to Russia.

Ivanishvili — who made his money in Russia in the cut-throat 1990s — has not publicly turned away from the West, but the country’s stance toward Moscow has clearly softened, and pro-Russian parties have gained ground.

Opposition M Ps noted that this week’s drama coincided with the Black Sea nation marking 100 years since it first came under Soviet occupation. “It is truly symbolic that all this coincides with the tragic week of the Soviet occupation of Georgia,” said opposition MP Giorgi Kandelaki.

What happens next? It’s not yet clear which faction has gained most from Gakharia’s resignation — or whether it will simply extend the political stalemate.

The ruling party tapped Irakli Garibashvili, a staunch party loyalist who was serving as defense minister, to take over as prime minister just hours after Gakharia resigned.

Members of parliament are expected to vote on a new prime minister and cabinet in the next two weeks. If it fails to do so, the president could dissolve the parliament and call new elections.

In his response to the prime minister’s resignation, Melia said snap elections were the only way out of the current crisis.

For nearly a decade, Ivanishvili’s chief rival has been Georgia’s former President Mikheil Saakashvili. But with Saakashvili in exile in Ukraine, and so far showing no sign of wanting to make an Alexei Navalny-style return, the spotlight has turned increasingly to Melia as the opposition’s best hope.

With his rugby-player like build and shaved head, the MP is an unmistakeable sight at opposition rallies and a pervasive irritant to Ivanishvili, denouncing what he calls his godfather rule of Georgia and accusing him of acting in the Kremlin’s interests.

To many in the opposition, therefore, the move to arrest Melia seemed to be an attempt to neuter a potential threat.

Some saw a silver lining in this week’s political turmoil, saying Gakharia’s resignation had exposed the divisions tearing the country apart.

“Seems we’ve escaped becoming Russia again,” Levan Tsutskiridze, head of the Eastern European Centre for Multiparty Democracy, a political advocacy group, tweeted.

What does it mean for the West? As news of Gakharia’s resignation broke, European ambassadors rushed to parliament and UNM’s headquarters, but so far their public response has been muted.

Former Estonian President Toomas Hendrik Ilves has been among the most outspoken in his response, tweeting that he was “disgusted by what is going on in a country I have spent 23 years promoting, defending, boosting, helping.”

Previously seen as a beacon of democracy and freedom in the region, there have been growing concerns that Georgia, which has set its sights on applying for full EU membership in 2024, is sliding backward in global democracy rankings. Judicial independence is of particular concern — and an issue at the heart of this case.

The opposition says the crisis provoked by Gakharia’s resignation should be a wake-up call for the West to renew its engagement with a country that has been a steadfast ally.

U.S. President Joe Biden is seen as a friend of Georgia and has signaled he will take a tougher line on Russia than his predecessor, but it is not yet clear whether he can deliver on Georgia’s long-held aspiration of eventually gaining NATO membership.