Armenia

Armenia, officially the Republic of Armenia, is a landlocked country in the Armenian highlands of West Asia, part of the Caucasus region, bordered by Turkey, Georgia, Azerbaijan and Iran, with Yerevan as its capital, largest city and financial center. The first Armenian state, Urartu, was established in 860 BC, and the Kingdom of Armenia became in AD 301 the first state in the world to adopt Christianity as its official religion, a faith the Armenian Apostolic Church, the world's oldest national church, still holds as the country's primary religious establishment. Armenia's traditional homeland was divided between the Ottoman and Persian, then Ottoman and Russian empires from the sixteenth through nineteenth centuries, and up to 1.5 million Armenians were systematically exterminated in the Armenian genocide during the First World War. The First Republic of Armenia declared independence in 1918 but was incorporated into the Soviet Union by 1920 as the Armenian Soviet Socialist Republic; the modern Republic of Armenia became independent again in 1991 during the Soviet Union's dissolution. It operates today as a unitary, multi-party, democratic nation-state, a developing country ranked 69th on the Human Development Index as of 2023, and though geographically part of the South Caucasus it considers itself part of Europe and belongs to numerous European organizations alongside regional Eurasian bodies.