The simmers of Nagorno-Karabakh and Donbas have become the extreme form of what the geopolitical tensions of 2025 in Eurasia would be like. The inability to solve the territorial issues between the two states, the two areas remain between de jure independence and de facto sovereignty, and this is used to justify the further stalemate in the diplomatic developments.
Nagorno-Karabakh is an ethnic Armenian enclave located in Azerbaijan since the late Soviet period that has been engaged in ceasefire bouts and periods of war. The war in 2020 changed its geography but failed to change its legitimacy debate because the status and the control of the state as a power is still a debatable issue in this case. The Russian-backed separatists in Ukrainian oblasts of Donetsk and Luhansk, still operate to undermine the authority of Kyiv even after the withdrawal of Russia in the 2022 full-scale invasion, albeit officially.
These incomplete boundaries pose a void of law and politics. De facto governments function with low international acceptance, which encourages parallel government systems thus complicating peacebuilding. Uncertainty is a daily condition of government, sense of identity, and safety of the local people and adds to the sense of nationalistic separation and hinders the process of reconciliation between the parties to the conflict.
Proxy wars and external influence shaping conflict dynamics
The participation of Russia in the two wars is an important aspect of its larger geopolitical policy of influence by manipulated instability. Nagorno-Karabakh saw the active hostilities cease thanks to the mediation of Moscow, which established itself as the main arbiter of security in the region. Russian peacekeepers continue to stay with a request renewed toughly in 2025 and it is an indication of diminished acceptance by both Armenia and Azerbaijan.
In Donbas, Russia has not disappeared as long as its role is. After the annexation allegations of 2022, and subsequent partial normalization negotiations with Kyiv Moscow has been further under the inferred control of political manipulation, economic reliance, and disinformation networks. Both wars are sources of pressure to be used by the Kremlin as a response to the Western influence that discourages the expansion of NATO in Ukraine and balances the interests of Turkey in the South Caucasus.
Turkey’s expanding regional assertiveness
The increasing influence of Turkey brings in a new dimension of competition in Eurasia. The fact that it firmly supported Azerbaijan in the 2020 Nagorno-Karabakh war essentially changed the balance in the region, placing Ankara as a co-guarantor of the post-war aspirations of Baku. The Turkish military support such as Bayraktar drones and defense systems sales continue to be core to the Azerbaijan security stance in 2025.
Turkey on the other hand is more diplomatic but symbolically powerful in its involvement in Ukraine. Ongoing defense cooperation and advocacy of the Crimean Tatar minority community affirms the balancing act of Ankara, who is both a NATO supporter and at the same time, does not lose energy and trade connections with Russia. Such a dual approach shows the desire of president Erdogan to make Turkey a regional force that can mediate conflicts, which it was previously capable of impacting through military means.
The evolving Russia-Turkey rivalry
The Russia-Turkey conflict is not limited to the personal battlefields, but reflects a rivalry in the field of domination in post-Soviet Eurasia. They both aim to gain advantage without face-on-face conflict, as proxies, diplomacy and economic means. Their relationships in Nagorno-Karabakh and Donbas show that they are pragmatically coexisting in which rivalry exists with selective cooperation. This fragile equilibrium is the state of balance of power in the year 2025, which contributes to the inability of frozen conflicts to resolve but instead perpetuate themselves in an unsustainable way.
OSCE mediation challenges and the difficulty of achieving durable peace
On both fronts, the Organization of Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE) is still the focal point but limited. Since 2022, the OSCE Minsk Group, which mediates Nagorno-Karabakh, has acted as a stalemate due to the co-chair disagreements and the lack of Western involvement. The status of the enclave and the rights of displaced persons are not in agreement with the border demarcation, even after the periodical diplomatic rounds.
The OSCE Special Monitoring Mission in Donbas is consistently restricted in its access, which prevents it from checking the observance of the ceasefire or checking the humanitarian situation. The renewal of the mandate of the mission in early 2025 was opposed by the separatist authorities, which stresses the loss of credibility of the mission in the face of ever-growing local aggression.
Competing mediation frameworks
Peace diplomacy has been corroded by the proliferation of overlapping mediation initiatives by the Eastern Partnership dialogue of the EU with South Caucasus states up to the 3+3 platform between Russia, Turkey, and Iran. Competing systems weaken accountability and instill diplomatic exhaustion in stakeholders. The lack of a consistent international interaction enables local actors to play on grey areas, which strengthens the status quo of stalemate.
The erosion of trust in multilateralism
The failure of the multilateral institutions to achieve sustainable peace reveals more underlying structural flaws. Consensus-based diplomacy is facing the environment of hard security interests and asymmetrical leverage. The non-partisanism of the OSCE, which once was its asset, is no longer able to intervene in the affairs of the conflicts when the great powers consider frozen crises as a geopolitical tool. Such a loss of confidence is indicative of a larger international family: the declining effectiveness of post-Cold War conflict management paradigms in an age of hybrid warfare and multipolar competition.
Long-term implications for Eurasian security and international order
Frozen conflicts create a root of insecurity that hinders the process of building up and reconciliation. In the two regions, civilians are in a condition of economic isolation, displacement, and inaccessibility to basic services. Humanitarian organizations indicate in 2025 further displacement across the Nagorno-Karabakh line after the administrative playground of Baku and the de-occupied regions of eastern Ukraine, where landmines and infrastructural breakdowns impede the recovery.
Such humanitarian disasters continue to create instability, which nurtures resentment and radicalization. Existing without well-developed reintegration frameworks traps the populations in the void between competing sovereignties, with no government in complete control over them nor more self-sufficient to make their own decisions.
Strategic costs of unresolved disputes
To Russia the frozen conflicts are a deterrence mechanism against the western integration but also have economic and political costs. The effect on its long-term presence is limited by military overstretch, sanctions, and reputational decline without domestic pressure. In the case of Turkey, this choice of selective involvement to pursue regional leadership can be overextending itself in case of economic headwinds and alliances.
The lack of a resolution is a hindrance to the consolidation of democracy and economic recovery of the affected states; Ukraine, Armenia, and Azerbaijan. Long-term instability takes resources allocated to governance and shifts them to military expenditure and political polarization increases as leaderships use nationalism to secure the instability.
Broader implications for global power competition
These frozen conflicts have been lasting, and this is an indication of a paradigm shift in Eurasian geopolitics. They serve not only as a battle ground of local wrangles but also as a place of massive power politics where sovereignty and power intersect. It is exposed by the failure of international mechanisms to enforce long-lasting settlements which demonstrates the imperfection of the rules-based order under the pressure of multipolarity.
With western focus pendulating between Indo-Pacific and Middle Eastern imperatives, there is a danger that Eurasian peripheries will be reduced to areas of controlled anarchy neither war nor peace, which exists through inertia and false calculation. This is a dynamic which can be observed in the context of both Donbas and Nagorno-Karabakh and it demonstrates the new paradigm of strategic paralysis, in which the continued existence of conflicts becomes a controlling mechanism.
The Nagorno-Karabakh and Donbas frozen conflicts highlight the strength of the instability as a geopolitical approach and not the collapse of diplomacy per se. Both of them are in 2025 still laboratories of hybrid war, proxy politics, and contentious sovereignty. It is their persistence that highlights the metamorphosis of the security structure in Eurasia where power is the demarcation of the sphere of influence, not peace. The fact that these areas will always be suspended or turn into emerging political realities will depend on whether external forces are interested in resolving them rather than competing, a question that still characterizes the uncertain future of the region.
