On June 22, Team Telecom Armenia and Azerbaijan's AzerTelecom signed a bilateral agreement on the mutual provision of internet transit services. Formally, the document is a technical and commercial agreement. Yet within a day, it had polarized Armenia's information space between those who viewed it as a new national security threat and those who dismissed such concerns as exaggerated. At the same time, the deal has been presented in almost the opposite light in Baku — a divergence in interpretation that is itself revealing.

What Was Actually Signed

According to the official statements issued by both companies, the agreement provides for reciprocal access to the cable infrastructure capacity of the two countries in order to diversify transmission routes and improve the resilience of regional telecommunications networks.

Aram Barseghyan, Deputy CEO of Team Telecom Armenia, explained that the agreement does not involve connecting the two countries' domestic networks. Rather, it establishes a point-to-point transit channel: an Azerbaijani cable will be extended to the border — with interconnection points planned in Kornidzor and Yeraskh — and traffic will then pass across Armenian infrastructure exclusively in transit to the Nakhchivan Autonomous Republic, without entering Armenia's domestic networks or involving any exchange of data between the two countries. The connection will also require approval from Armenia's National Security Service.

In comments to Armenpress, Team Telecom Armenia Chairman Alexander Yesayan stressed that the agreement is purely commercial. Under the arrangement, the Armenian operator is selling transmission capacity specifically for the Nakhchivan–mainland Azerbaijan route. While the Azerbaijani side gains access to the transmission channel, it does not gain access to the transmitted data. According to Yesayan, because the Armenian company is the seller of transit capacity, any potential risks are asymmetrical and do not work in Azerbaijan's favor.

Barseghyan also noted that although the agreement is not formally part of the TRIPP project, it fits logically within its broader framework. This is an important distinction, as Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan has previously referred to transit infrastructure — including fiber-optic cables and gas pipelines crossing Armenian territory — as part of the TRIPP concept.

The key point is that the practical core of the agreement concerns connectivity between mainland Azerbaijan and the Nakhchivan Autonomous Republic via Armenian fiber-optic infrastructure — not the other way around. The Armenian side has explicitly stated that it does not intend to use Azerbaijani infrastructure, although such a possibility is technically envisaged under the bilateral agreement.

Media expert and cybersecurity specialist Samvel Martirosyan offered a useful comparison with railway transit. In the case of rail transport, Armenia is generally regarded as the party with the greater interest in reopening connections. In the case of internet transit, however, the situation is reversed: Azerbaijan is the party that needs the transit route in order to establish reliable digital connectivity with Nakhchivan. In other words, based on the implementation model described by the Armenian side, the practical dependency created by the agreement appears to be asymmetrical, with Baku standing to rely more heavily on the transit corridor.

Yerevan: Examining the Security Concerns

The principal concern raised by information security specialist Ruben Muradyan is that if Armenian internet traffic were ever routed through AzerTelecom infrastructure, it could potentially be analyzed using Deep Packet Inspection (DPI) technology. CivilNetCheck examined this and other concerns by interviewing several cybersecurity specialists.

DPI and user profiling. Even though encrypted HTTPS traffic cannot be decrypted by DPI, the technology can still reveal which online platforms users access. Artur Papyan of Team Telecom argues that such aggregated statistics — for example, the percentage of subscribers using YouTube or Telegram — have limited intelligence value. Akop Papinyan of RedSide Security agrees, noting that DPI can provide only a broad picture of traffic patterns rather than visibility into users' activities within those platforms.

Risks for static IP users. According to Papyan, identifying an individual behind a static IP address would require considerable technical resources and, in his words, deploying spyware such as Pegasus would actually be a cheaper option. Papinyan adds that the greater risk concerns organizations operating fixed IP addresses, since an observer may infer which services a particular institution uses and exploit that information in targeted cyberattacks. Vahan Hovsepyan of RIPE NCC further notes that internet providers commonly assign a single public IP address to hundreds or even thousands of users, making individual identification significantly more difficult.

BGP route manipulation. The Border Gateway Protocol (BGP) is an aging routing protocol and is theoretically vulnerable to accidental or malicious route announcements. Hovsepyan points to the 2008 Pakistan incident, when an attempt to block YouTube domestically resulted in the platform becoming temporarily inaccessible worldwide. However, Papinyan argues that deliberately redirecting internet traffic through malicious route announcements would require highly sophisticated technical capabilities, while Papyan emphasizes that such risks are inherent to the architecture of the internet itself rather than to this specific agreement.

Transit as political leverage. Hovsepyan also stresses that Azerbaijan is not Armenia's internet provider. Most Armenian internet traffic continues to pass through Georgia, while an additional southern route exists through Iran. Consequently, disruption of a single transit channel might slow connectivity but would not cause a nationwide internet blackout. Papyan adds that, in theory, leverage is reciprocal: Armenia itself could use transit toward Azerbaijan as an instrument of influence.

Muradyan nevertheless maintains his concerns. Even if Team Telecom Armenia has no intention of using Azerbaijani infrastructure today, the agreement is reciprocal in nature, meaning such use remains possible in the future. He also argues that any elevated risks would primarily affect politicians, journalists, and civil society organizations rather than ordinary internet users.

The Argument That "This Dependency Already Exists"

Those taking a more relaxed view of the agreement advance a broader argument. Papyan notes that roughly 90 percent of the internet traffic passing through Armenian infrastructure is already transit traffic destined for third countries — for example, through Iran to the Middle East — without entering Armenia's domestic networks.

Moreover, dependence on infrastructure linked to Azerbaijan already exists to some extent. The 1,200-kilometer submarine cable operated by Georgia's Caucasus Online, through which a substantial share of internet traffic serving Georgia, Armenia, and other countries in the region flows, has been wholly owned since 2021 by Azerbaijani businessman Nasib Hasanov, who is widely regarded as being close to President Ilham Aliyev.

From this perspective, the new agreement does not create an entirely new dependency. Rather, it formalizes an existing pattern of regional digital transit. In Papyan's view, it also presents Armenia with an opportunity to establish itself as a regional digital hub linking east-west connectivity with the existing north-south corridor.

Baku: The Same Agreement, a Different Narrative

While the debate in Yerevan has centered on whether Azerbaijan could gain access to Armenian data, Azerbaijani media have framed the agreement in almost the opposite way. State-affiliated outlets, including AZERTAC, Trend, and Report.az, have portrayed the deal primarily as providing Armenia with international internet connectivity through Azerbaijan, emphasizing AzerTelecom's role as a connectivity provider to the Armenian side rather than the other way around. Azadliq (the Azerbaijani service of Azatutyun/Radio Liberty) even ran the headline that Armenia's internet would "go through Azerbaijan".

This framing differs from the one presented by the Armenian side. Although the agreement is formally reciprocal, its principal practical component is the transit link connecting mainland Azerbaijan with the Nakhchivan Autonomous Republic via Armenian fiber-optic infrastructure. Armenia's use of Azerbaijani infrastructure remains a theoretical possibility under the agreement, but Armenian officials have repeatedly stated that they have no plans to make use of it. Consequently, presenting the arrangement primarily as Armenia receiving internet connectivity through Azerbaijan reflects a political framing that differs from the technical implementation described by the Armenian operator. Based on the publicly outlined model, Azerbaijan is the party that requires Armenian transit in order to establish reliable connectivity with Nakhchivan.

Reaction within Azerbaijan has not been entirely uniform. The opposition newspaper Musavat questioned whether the agreement could create opportunities for Armenian cyber operations against Azerbaijan. Experts interviewed by the newspaper concluded that the agreement is primarily commercial and technical in nature, noting that the physical path taken by internet traffic is generally not the decisive factor in conducting cyberattacks, as modern cyber operations do not require traffic to pass through the target country's territory. At the same time, they argued that Azerbaijan should strengthen the protection of its critical infrastructure through enhanced traffic monitoring, network segmentation, and regular security audits in order to keep potential risks under control.

Member of Parliament Vugar Bayramov, by contrast, welcomed the agreement, describing it as Azerbaijan's contribution to building lasting peace in the South Caucasus. Meanwhile, an analytical article published by JAMnews in Azerbaijani focused less on technical considerations than on the broader political context. It argued that the agreement had been concluded before a comprehensive political settlement had been reached — without a signed peace treaty and before the constitutional changes in Armenia that Baku has demanded — meaning that infrastructure interdependence is developing ahead of political normalization. The article also reported that Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan had instructed Armenia's Secretary of the Security Council to contact his Azerbaijani counterpart amid growing tensions in an effort to prevent further escalation.

What Lies Behind the Two Narratives

From a technical standpoint, most experts interviewed in both countries agree that the agreement does not, by itself, create catastrophic cybersecurity risks. Rather, they describe it as a standard commercial arrangement aimed at diversifying internet transit routes and improving network resilience — a common practice in the telecommunications industry.

Based on the implementation model presented by the Armenian side, however, the practical dependency appears to be asymmetrical. Azerbaijan requires Armenian fiber-optic infrastructure to establish reliable connectivity between mainland Azerbaijan and the Nakhchivan Autonomous Republic, whereas Armenia, according to its own officials, neither depends on nor intends to use Azerbaijani infrastructure.

Politically, the agreement has emerged at a particularly sensitive moment. In Armenia, it coincided with a period of post-election turbulence and renewed domestic political narratives — a context explicitly referenced by Artur Papyan, who pointed to the debate surrounding the issue of "300,000 Azerbaijanis". In Azerbaijan, meanwhile, the agreement comes amid an ongoing normalization process that has yet to be consolidated by a formal peace treaty. In both countries, public debate has rapidly shifted away from the technical details of internet routing toward a broader political question: how much critical infrastructure the two sides are prepared to entrust to one another before the political foundations of that trust have been firmly established.

Journalist

Marine KHARATYAN

#ARMENIA

#AZERBAIJAN

29.06.2026 03:28