Azerbaijan To Reopen One Land Route, Restart Passenger Trains With Georgia

Azerbaijan announced Wednesday that it will reopen a land crossing with neighboring Georgia and resume passenger rail service between the two capitals, a move the government describes as aimed at reuniting families long separated by the pandemic-era travel limits. Regular trains are scheduled to resume on May 26, officials said, restoring an overland option after more than five years of travel being possible only by air — a cost many ethnic Azeris in Georgia cannot afford.

The restoration of the Baku–Tbilisi passenger link was included in a bundle of accords signed during Georgian Prime Minister Irakli Kobakhidze’s trip to Baku on May 18, according to the Azerbaijani news agency. State statements said the rail restart is intended first and foremost to allow people-to-people travel between communities on both sides of the border, where many residents have been cut off from relatives for years.

The governments also agreed to speed upgrades on the rail corridor that connects Azerbaijan and Georgia with Turkey at Kars, and to expand handling capacity at Kartsakhi on the Georgian–Turkish line to shorten delays for freight. Officials framed the improvements as both a way to increase cargo throughput and to reduce bottlenecks that have hindered regional transit routes.

Azerbaijan made clear this reopening is narrowly targeted. Apart from the Georgian connection, other overland crossings will remain shut, the government said. That stance leaves Azerbaijan as the only country still maintaining pandemic-era closures at its land borders, a policy that President Ilham Aliyev has defended as increasingly linked to security concerns rather than solely to public health. “We closed the borders because of the virus,” he said last year in a public comment; “today, the choice to keep them limited is also about protecting the country.”

Analysts say the rail restart will ease burdens on communities that relied on cross-border ties and could modestly boost trade along the southern corridor. A regional transport specialist interviewed for this report argued the move balances humanitarian considerations with a cautious approach to broader reopening. “It’s a narrow but meaningful step — it helps people without abandoning the government's wider security calculations,” the expert said.

For residents in Azerbaijani-populated towns in Georgia, the resumption of trains will be an immediate relief — cheaper and more accessible than flights. Still, the limited nature of the reopening suggests that full normalization of land travel across Azerbaijan’s borders remains distant, and observers will be watching whether further crossings are reopened or if the restrictions persist.