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Leaders of Armenia and Azerbaijan Nikol Pashinyan and Ilham Aliyev signed a peace agreement on Friday in the presence of US President Donald Trump in Washington, after almost four decades of a bloody Karabakh conflict. 

“We are today establishing peace in the South Caucasus,” Azerbaijan’s President Aliyev said. “Today we writing a great new history.”

Armenian Premier Pashinyan added that this agreement represented “opening a chapter of peace”. “(We are) laying foundations to a better story that the one we had in the past,” he added.

“The countries of Armenia and Azerbaijan are committing to ending all fighting forever,” Trump said at a joint press conference with the two leaders.

“They suffered greatly for so many years, many tried to find resolution, the European Union, the Russians, never happened,” he added. “But with this accord we finally succeeded making peace.”

In September 2023, Azerbaijan reclaimed full control of the Karabakh region after a lightning military campaign, and over the past year, Baku and Yerevan have been making progress in normalising their relations. 

Although the Friday’s signing ceremony included not only Pashinyan and Aliyev, but also Trump, the former adversaries managed to mend fences only when there was no third party involved any more, including Washington and Moscow. But unlike Russia, the US will benefit from the peace agreement. 

‘Trump route’ in South Caucasus

Armenia and Azerbaijan agreed to create a major transit corridor that will be named the Trump Route for International Peace and Prosperity.

It will connect mainland Azerbaijan and its Nakhchivan region, which borders Baku’s ally Turkey via Armenian territory.

White House spokeswoman Anna Kelly said the new transit corridor will “allow unimpeded connectivity between the two countries while respecting Armenia’s sovereignty and territorial integrity and its people.”

Azerbaijan and Nakhchivan are separated by a 32-kilometre patch of Armenia’s territory.

For Baku, the corridor offers a direct land connection to Nakhchivan, strengthens ties with Turkey and consolidates post-war gains through infrastructure diplomacy. 

It also strengthens Azerbaijan’s position as a crucial transport and logistics hub on a global scale. Initially, Azerbaijan did not want to have any third party involved and preferred to have it under Baku’s control, without the US, Europe or Russia’s involvement.

For Yerevan the transport route provides an opportunity to further integrate into wider trade networks, diversify its battered economy and attract foreign investment. Geopolitically, it would also help Armenia normalise relations with its neighbours.

Yerevan was concerned it could threaten Armenian sovereignty and wanted it to remain under Armenian control. 

The new Trump route will be operated according to Armenian law, and the US will sublease the land to a consortium for infrastructure and management, the officials said.

Trump previewed much of Friday’s plan in a social media post Thursday evening, saying the two leaders would sign economic agreements with the US that would “fully unlock the potential of the South Caucasus region.”

“Many leaders have tried to end the war, with no success, until now, thanks to Trump,” the US president said on his Truth Social site.

Former allies

Armenia and Azerbaijan have also signed a document on dissolving the OSCE’s Minsk Group. 

“If we are closing the page on the conflict, then why do we need a format that deals with its settlement,” Pashinyan said earlier this week.

Established in 1992, the OSCE Minsk Group was meant to facilitate the resolution of the Karabakh conflict, and it has been chaired by France, the US and Russia. 

Its dissolution not only marks the end of the Karabakh conflict, but also formalises Baku and Yerevan distancing themselves from Moscow, especially given the fact that the two leaders have jointly made the formal request in Washington. 

Signing the peace agreement in Washington alongside the US president sends a strong signal to Moscow regarding the two countries’ commitment to finding a solution among themselves, but also redirects their foreign policy focus to the West.

Moscow has been trying to repair the cooperation with both Baku and Yerevan, offering “mediation” and launching disinformation campaigns against Yerevan.

In recent days, Russia-state-controlled media have issued massive criticism and numerous attacks on Pashinyan, accusing him of “trading” Armenian sovereignty for personal financial gains and even calling him a “puppet”. 

Earlier Moscow had also launched disinformation campaigns against Yerevan with false allegations of “a bio weapons facility in Armenia orchestrated by the Americans”.

Moscow had repeatedly made similar claims about US bio-weapons facilities in Ukraine before the full-scale invasion. Russia has also made similar false claims about Georgia in the past. 

Russia’s attempts to repair its ties with Baku were entirely destroyed when an Azerbaijani airliner crashed in Kazakhstan in December, killing 38 of 67 people aboard. 

As exclusively reported by Euronews, investigations into the incident revealed that the Azerbaijan Airlines Flight 8243 was shot at by Russian air defence over Russia’s Grozny and rendered uncontrollable by electronic warfare. 

Azerbaijan’s Aliyev recently announced that his country is preparing to file lawsuits in international courts against Russia regarding the Azerbaijan Airlines plane crash.

Referring to the investigation into the Malaysian airline Boeing case, shot down by Russian militants over the Russia-occupied Donetsk region of Ukraine, Aliyev said Baku is ready to wait as long as it takes. 

“We are ready to wait 10 years, but justice must win. And unfortunately, the situation, which is currently in limbo, does not contribute to the development of bilateral relations between Russia and Azerbaijan,” he explained.

Last month, Azerbaijan and Russia engaged in another rare escalation. Baku detained the executive director and editor-in-chief of Russia’s state-run news agency Sputnik following Moscow’s raids of the Azeri community in Yekaterinburg. 

Two people died during the raid by the Russian Federal Security Service (FSB), and 50 more were detained.