The Baku-Tbilisi-Kars railway finally got a full-scale launch after opening in 2017 but only running tests for nine years. When it began operations, it had much lower capacity than what was initially intended. Now, though, annual freight capacity jumped from one million to five million tons thanks to upgrades in the Georgian section. Azerbaijan fully paid for these improvements. To mark the big day, transport ministers from Azerbaijan, Georgia, and Türkiye joined in some symbolic action at the station. They all pushed a button and let a freight train roll through. It was quite a photo-op for Reuters to capture. In a move watched closely by officials in Yerevan, Baku, and Moscow, Georgia’s prime minister Irakli Kobakhidze addressed the press. He mentioned that his country could work more closely with Armenia and might include them in the BTK project in the future.

That sentence, delivered at an infrastructure ceremony, is the most consequential diplomatic signal to emerge from the South Caucasus transport sector this week, and its implications extend well beyond freight timetables. The BTK railway is what Yerevan fought against for ten years, pushing for its veto in European capitals and Brussels. Meanwhile, Azerbaijan bankrolled it, Georgia constructed it, and Türkiye hooked it up to their rail network. Armenia argued the BTK would cut them out of regional connectivity, and boy, were they right. Their exclusion happened exactly as predicted. Now, whether this exclusion can be reversed is the main point raised by Tuesday’s ceremony.

There are specific numbers that needed to be highlighted; perhaps the modernization of the project led to a significant increase in those numbers. That includes:

The capacity increases from 1........

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