In early August, Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan spoke on the phone with Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev. What would have once been a rare moment of direct dialogue between two countries locked in a deadly, decades-long conflict has now become a somewhat regular occurrence. The two also released identical statements about the call.

The reason for the phone call was to mark the one-year anniversary of the Washington summit, which brought together Pashinyan, Aliyev, and US President Donald Trump, and resulted in the initialling — but not the signing — of a peace treaty.

That same day, Trump also spoke with Pashinyan and Aliyev, separately, while Secretary of State Marco Rubio issued his own statement. On 10 August, the three sides released a joint statement on the anniversary of the summit, highlighting the progress made over the past year.

For Trump — who is historically unpopular heading into the US midterm elections and whose second term has been increasingly marred by what has become a quagmire in Iran — helping delegate peace between Armenia and Azerbaijan is one of the few clear foreign policy successes of the past two years.

Narek Sukiasyan, a political scientist based in Yerevan, tells OC Media that there has never been such an extensive presence of Armenian and Azerbaijani leaders around the US president.

‘Trump’s presence has been absolutely key. Not only has he bypassed diplomatic niceties and forced countries to make peace with his unapologetically assertive manner and huge ego in the room, but there is also a very clear understanding and realisation among the sides that they both benefit from Trump’s personal involvement’, Sukiasyan says.

In contrast, Azerbaijani historian Jamil Hasanli tells OC Media that the ‘propaganda value’ of the 8 August 2025 document ‘outweighs its actual practical impact’.

Hasanli also says that while Trump was led to believe that he was the one who stepped in and ended the conflict, in fact, these characterisations were used simply to exaggerate his achievements.

Currently, the route remains unbuilt and the treaty unsigned, but there are tangible signs of the peace all three sides claim to have established one year ago, including eight separate benchmarks achieved since August 2025, the 10 August statement noted:

• Stability on the border
• The Trump Route
• The Trans-Caspian Enterprise Fund that oversees funding for the Trump Route
• Deepened bilateral ties between the US and Armenia and the US and Azerbaijan
• Lifting of transit restrictions between Armenia and Azerbaijan
• Agreement to link telecommunications
• The dissolution of the OSCE Minsk Group
• Azerbaijan and Armenia joining Trump’s Board of Peace

The Trump Route

Besides the treaty itself, nothing stemming from the summit has garnered more attention than the Trump Route.

The project, a roughly 43-kilometre route through Armenia’s southern Syunik province, figures into a larger Middle Corridor trade channel between Europe and Asia. Amidst Russia’s full-scale war against Ukraine and the related isolation of Russia and closure of trade routes, the Middle Corridor has become all the more important. Though much is still unknown about the project, a yet unidentified American company is set to manage the route under a 99-year lease brokered in the Washington summit, ostensibly locking the US into long term involvement with both countries.

In terms of geopolitics, the route illustrates how the US has effectively supplanted Russia, the long-time power regional broker, as the dominant external power in the South Caucasus. Iran, one of Armenia’s close allies, will also be shut out of the project.

Trump has appointed Russian-born US-based investor Konstantin Sokolov to oversee the TRIPP+ Enterprise Fund, the parent fund of the Trump Route, which was established in January 2026. The fund, which was allocated $201 million, will not only be directed at Armenia, but will have the ability to ‘make loans, equity investments, and grants promoting strategic private sector development in the South Caucasus and Central Asia, including in Armenia, Azerbaijan, Georgia, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, and Uzbekistan’, a State Department official told The Guardian.

Although the nature of the US involvement in the project is slowly coming into focus, there are still a number of unknowns.

In its statement on 8 August, the State Department described the Trump Route as ‘a multimodal transit route that will modernise rails, road, energy, and digital infrastructure’ and said it ‘is on its way to becoming a reality with engineering surveys for the railway in Armenia already underway and Azerbaijan’s near completion of a highway and railroad to connect into Armenia’.

Nonetheless, there was no timeline attached for when the route would actually become operational. Indeed, Hasanli is skeptical that it will open anytime soon, arguing that the benefits will remain on paper.

It is also unclear exactly how the US stands to profit from the project, if it intends to take a cut of the tolls or if the financial opportunities are in a broader, more long-term sense.

There are also a number of outstanding issues and disagreements about the nature of the route itself. Azerbaijan has repeatedly stated it does not want Armenian border guards to have an outward facing role in the day-to-day management of the route, and Armenia is unlikely to allow Azerbaijani border guards to man posts on Armenian territory, meaning a third-party would have to take up the role.

A document released by the US in January stressed Armenia would retain ‘legislative, regulatory, and judicial authority’ over all Trump Route areas, ‘control over national security and law enforcement’, as well as authority over border control, taxes, customs duties, and more. However, ‘private operators’ contracted by the TRIPP Development Company would process entry into Armenia from Azerbaijan. The document did not specify who the operators would be, from which country they would come from, or how it would be ensured they have the appropriate skills, including knowledge of both Armenian and Azerbaijani languages.

Finally, there are the security concerns. There are still Russian troops on the border between Armenia and Iran, which would then be in close proximity to workers from an American company, creating a potentially tricky situation. Armenian opposition leader Narek Karapetyan has also suggested Iran could also target the route.

Trade and other economic connections

Over the past year, for the first time since the collapse of the Soviet Union, Armenia and Azerbaijan have directly traded with one another.

So far, the value of this trade has been relatively modest — in the first quarter of 2026, Azerbaijan exported just shy of $6 million worth of products to Armenia, while Armenian exports to Azerbaijan in the same period were at a paltry $960. Even that tiny figure was thought to be the value of gifts Armenian civil society figures brought to Azerbaijan, as Armenia said at the time that official exports have not begun yet.

At the end of 2025, Azerbaijan exported fuel to Armenia, via Georgia, for the first time. Since then, Azerbaijani fuel has made up the bulk of its exports to Armenia — as of 10 August, some 20,000 tonnes of Azerbaijani oil products had been shipped to Armenia.

In January 2026, Armenian Economy Minister Gevorg Papoyan said Azerbaijan would begin shipping liquified gas (LNG) and bitumen to Armenia via Azerbaijani rail networks. Talks on widening the list of products — including aluminum foil, domesticated animals, raw materials for brandy, tobacco, textiles, roses, and other greenhouse products — to be exported are ongoing.

The economic connections are not just limited to tangible products — in June, Telecom Armenia and Azertelecom agreed to route internet traffic through each other’s territories, allowing Azerbaijan to provide internet connection to Nakhchivan using Armenian infrastructure.

Previously, in January, Pashinyan said the energy systems of Armenia and Azerbaijan ‘will definitely and unequivocally be interconnected’. He did not mention a timeline, however.

But beyond the direct trade between the two countries, Azerbaijan has begun acting as a transit route for goods from other countries — namely Russia, and to a lesser extent Kazakhstan — to reach Armenia. The statement on 10 August said ‘close to 60,000 tonnes of goods have been transported to and from Armenia through Azerbaijan’.

Another positive aspect Sukiasyan highlights is the investment by US tech companies in Armenia.

‘Though there are certain concerns, in terms of their environmental and financial sustainability, nevertheless, they also seem to be sending a signal towards both financial and IT markets to be interested in Armenia, which should trickle down to overall prosperity if the project succeeds’, he says.

Earlier in August, the San Francisco-based AI company Firebird opened the region’s largest AI data centre in Armenia, which intends to use tens of thousands of NVIDIA processing units. Speaking at the opening ceremony, Pashinyan said the project was directly linked to the Washington summit.

Despite all of this progress, there are still trade barriers. Armenia’s border with Turkey remains closed, putting the prospect of a full east-west corridor through the South Caucasus on hold until Ankara and Yerevan normalise relations. There are also fears in Armenia that a glut of Turkish products could undermine Armenia’s own agriculture industry. The scars of decades of conflict have unsurprisingly not faded yet, and there is still much hesitation on both sides of the border to create business ties.

‘In terms of the perception of trade, we saw a certain backlash in Armenia when the supply of fuels was first announced’, Sukiasyan recalls. However, he adds that this was later accompanied by a certain acceptance.

‘I don’t think this is strange, given that any society dealing with such a complicated history of conflict would have a variety of views’.

Despite these outstanding issues, Armenia and Azerbaijan are more bound together economically now than any time since independence.

Armenia’s elections and unlikely constitutional amendments

The election, held in June, saw Pashinyan’s Civil Contract party secure another term in office, albeit with a smaller majority — and crucially — one that does not exceed the threshold required to change the constitution. Part of the constitution references the Declaration of Independence, which in turn was ‘based’ on a joint decision made by Soviet Armenia’s Supreme Council and the Nagorno-Karabakh National Council on the ‘reunification’ of Armenia and Nagorno-Karabakh. Azerbaijan has repeatedly demanded the constitution be changed to remove that clause, and has said no peace treaty can be signed until then.

Pashinyan appears to be stuck between a rock and a hard place, as the opposition is unlikely to agree to handing him a political victory by supporting constitutional change. Even holding a referendum on the issue, which Pashinyan has also suggested, would require a two-thirds majority, which Civil Contract does not possess.

‘Current or former, an enemy’s demand is still highly unpopular, regardless of how the ruling party attempts to formulate it as a charter of new Armenia or as a text providing for better checks and balances; the predominant perception is of an Azerbaijani demand, and the chances are very high that that referendum may fail’, Sukiasyan emphasises.

For a legitimate referendum, Pashinyan would need a ‘yes’ vote of at least one quarter of the registered voters. Sukiasyan argues that this may be part of the motivation for Civil Contract to change the electoral code, depriving hundreds of thousands of its citizens of the ability to exercise their right to vote if they had not resided in Armenia for a certain period of time, even though the primary motivation seems to have been preventing organised transportation of diaspora voters in favour of a certain candidate.

Official visits

Over the past year, there have been a number of official visits from Armenia and Azerbaijan and other cross-cultural events, signalling the taboo on travel between the two countries may be slowly ending.

Shortly after the Washington summit, Armenian Deputy Prime Minister Mher Grigoryan and Azerbaijani Deputy Prime Minister Shahin Mustafayev paid respective visits. Both Grigoryan and Mustafayev chair their counties’ border delimitation commissions.

Following this, Andranik Simonyan, the Chief of the National Security Service (NSS), visited Azerbaijan in September 2025 and participated in the third iteration of the International Security Forum in Baku.

After the election in June 2026, Azerbaijani presidential aide Hikmat Hajiyev, one of the most influential figures in the Azerbaijani government, visited Armenia and met with Secretary of the Armenian Security Council Armen Grigoryan.

The sides discussed the peace process and said the next meeting would be in Azerbaijan.

There have also been a number of lower-level meetings, connecting civil society groups on both sides of the border under the ‘Bridge of Peace’ initiative.

Despite the progress towards peace made over the last year, there have been no plans announced for the big league visits — Pashinyan in Azerbaijan or Aliyev in Armenia.

Remaining issues

In addition to some of the outstanding questions and unknowns mentioned already, there are a few more remaining issues that have been left unresolved.

• Border delimitation

The work of the respective commissions in both countries has not been completed, and there are still disagreements on the exact placement of the border. Moreover, there are still Azerbaijani troops on territory internationally recognised as Armenian. Other tricky border-related issues remain, such as the presence of Russian troops on the Armenian border with Iran, the closure of the Turkish–Armenian border, and Azerbaijan’s unilateral decision to keep its land border with Georgia closed, unrelated to the conflict and ostensibly to prevent the spread of COVID-19.

Additionally, despite the occasional meetings between the sides, the delimitation process has been on hold since 2024.

‘One thing that might accelerate the process might come from the realisation of the TRIPP, because if the road or any sort of passage is to be implemented, one needs to draw the line where the border is’, Sukiasyan says.

• Armenian prisoners held by Azerbaijan

There are currently at least 19 Armenian prisoners held in Azerbaijan, some of whom were sentenced in the last year — amidst the ongoing peace process — to lengthy prison terms or life sentences. These prisoners include some of the foreign and military leadership of Nagorno-Karabakh, as well as ordinary soldiers captured during the Second Nagorno-Karabakh War or the 2023 Azerbaijani offensive. While Azerbaijan also opted to release four prisoners over the last year, Aliyev has reiterated the leadership and ‘individuals who committed crimes against the Azerbaijani people’ would remain in custody.

Sukiasyan believes that it is unlikely that Armenian prisoners, especially the high-ranking officials, will be sent to Armenia anytime soon. However, third-party interests could be leveraged against or in favour of this goal.

‘What Azerbaijan has been very much interested in has been the cancellation of Section 907 of the 1992 United States Freedom Support Act, which prevents the United States from providing aid to Azerbaijan as long as aggression against Armenians continues’, he says.

‘One thing that can be traded to get this waiver can be the release of Armenian illegal detainees’.

• ‘Western Azerbaijan’ narrative

Azerbaijan has long promoted the irredentist ‘Western Azerbaijan’ campaign, which under the guise of humanitarian concerns, contains territorial claims on parts or the whole of Armenian territory. The narrative has repeatedly cropped up in both countries, with some in Azerbaijan saying 300,000 Azerbaijanis could move to Armenia, a figure that Armenia’s own political opposition has at times claimed Pashinyan would accept. Even as the peace process has continued, Azerbaijan’s pushing of the narrative has not stopped. There are indications Azerbaijan’s Presidential Administration is funding the campaign.

• Protection of Armenian cultural heritage

Since both the Second Nagorno-Karabakh War in 2020 and Azerbaijan’s 2023 offensive, repeated concerns have been raised about the destruction of Armenian cultural heritage sites by Azerbaijan. Armenian organisations have urged Azerbaijan to protect the sites, but many buildings, churches, and other cultural spots, particularly those built between the first and second wars, have been destroyed or renovated in a manner that removes their connection to Armenia. For its part, Azerbaijan has said such places were illegally built, while claiming that it will protect preexisting heritage sites. Baku has also drawn attention to the destruction of Azerbaijani cultural heritage sites in areas that had previously been under Armenian control.

• Azerbaijani persecution of contacts with Armenians

Baku’s longstanding practice of policing Azerbaijanis who work in any way with Armenians has continued even as progress towards peace has been made. In one notable case, OC Media contributor and researcher Bahruz Samadov was sentenced to 15 years in prison on treason charges for allegedly having contacts with Armenian intelligence. In February 2026, he filed an appeal to prevent his transfer to a maximum-security prison, but it was rejected.

Talysh researcher Igbal Abilov, who was arrested by the Azerbaijani State Security Service (DTX), and Talysh historian Zahiraddin Ibrahimov, who was kidnapped in Russia and then taken to Azerbaijan by the DTX, were also accused of communicating with Armenian researcher Garnik Asatrian. Abilov was sentenced to 18 years in prison for treason in May 2025, and Ibrahimov’s investigation continues. Their charges have not been altered in any way as the peace process continues.

Hasanli highlights that the Washington agreement lacks any provisions regarding human rights, noting that ‘everything which we can list about human rights — and everything contained in the statement of the Azerbaijani Foreign Ministry — amounts to mere details’.

‘Although a year has passed, the situation in the region remains one of conflict’, Hasanli argues.

• Conflicts over historical memory

Both Armenia and Azerbaijan have radically different views on history of both the region and the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict, and the disputes are not just among historians from both sides — they continue to be duked out at the highest level of geopolitics.

Azerbaijan, along with Turkey, does not recognise the Armenian Genocide, and actively tries to lobby against any attempts around the world for the mass murder of Armenians by the Ottoman Empire to be labeled a genocide. This effort has not stopped even as the peace process continues. Earlier in 2026, Azerbaijan was reported to have pressured Israel to block a vote in the country’s parliament to officially recognise the genocide, resulting in the bill being dropped.

At the same time, Azerbaijan has sought global recognition that the 1918 massacres of Azerbaijanis by Armenians was a genocide, prompting Pashinyan to call for an end to the tit-for-tat accusations about historical events in March 2026.

‘In general, this race of genocide [accusations] needs to stop. In our region, everyone accuses everyone of genocide’, Pashinyan said.

Not all of these unresolved factors are expected to change anytime soon, but there are some that could determine the course of the progress over the next year.

Sukiasyan highlights three key areas between Armenia and Azerbaijan that could influence the trajectory — the rate of trade volumes between Armenia and Azerbaijan, the pace of delimitation around the Trump Route (but also in other border areas), and Baku’s position on the need for Armenia to change its constitution.

There is also a fourth factor, he adds, which is out of the hands of either country — US domestic politics.

The Republican Party looks weak heading into the midterms, and a loss in the elections could both impact the Trump administration’s interest in the Trump Route and its capacity to deliver on its promises. The Democrats, on the other hand, may look to apply closer scrutiny on the project, particularly on its funding and the pay-for-play allegations surrounding Sokolov’s appointment.

In any case, continued progress towards peace seems all but assured, given that no party is likely to wish for a return to full-out war in the near future.

For ease of reading, we choose not to use qualifiers such as ‘de facto’, ‘unrecognised’, or ‘partially recognised’ when discussing institutions or political positions within Abkhazia, Nagorno-Karabakh, and South Ossetia. This does not imply a position on their status.

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