The border starts in the west at the Georgian tripoint and proceeds in south-eastwards direction over various mountain ridges of the Caucasus Mountains, before turning to the north-east roughly halfway and then proceeding along the Samur river valley to the Samur Delta on the Caspian Sea coast.

Parts of the border are fenced and equipped with technical facilities including barbed wire, sensors and cameras.

During the 19th century the Caucasus region was contested between the declining Ottoman Empire, Persia and Russia, which was expanding southwards.

[3] By the Russo-Persian War (1804–1813) and the subsequent Treaty of Gulistan, Russia acquired the bulk of what is now Azerbaijan and parts of Armenia.

During the First World War Russian Communists staged a successful revolution in 1917, whilst the peoples of the southern Caucasus had declared the Transcaucasian Democratic Federative Republic in 1918.