The situation surrounding the peace treaty between Armenia and Azerbaijan is quite comparable to a detective story. Judging by the current developments, this story may continue according to either an optimistic or a pessimistic scenario. Therefore, it is important to recall how this process evolved and analyze its different stages. This will help to understand the logic behind the ongoing events and assess the likelihood of a happy ending.
The optimistic scenario envisions that the parties will defer the remaining contradictions for the future and proceed with signing the document, the final agreement on the text of which was announced by the foreign ministries of both countries in mid-March 2025. Regardless of how much the significance of formal signatures is downplayed in the new global realities, where the principles of international law and international relations are falling apart more easily than a house of cards, this symbolic act itself would reduce the likelihood of a new war between these “sworn” neighbors. The pessimistic scenario would imply postponing the signing until at least 2027, when a referendum on adopting a new Constitution of Armenia is set to be held, without any guarantee that all parties will wait for this happy moment with patience and belief in a better future, and that they will be satisfied with the draft of the new Main Law itself. Overall, the idea of conditioning peace between Baku and Yerevan on a revision of the constitutional foundations amounts to laying new mines under Armenian-Azerbaijani relations. This, however, is a separate and extensive topic, which will be revisited in the next publication.
Excessive optimism regarding the agreed-upon text most likely played a cruel trick and, on the contrary, increased the probability of a pessimistic scenario. The Azerbaijani side’s rejection of the initiative for a joint statement also validates this point. This seems to indicate Baku’s reluctance to prioritize the completion of the work on the document’s content over recording that Yerevan has accepted its conditions. The wave of congratulatory messages from all over the world on the “end of the 37-year conflict,” along with calls not to delay the signing, ran counter to Azerbaijan’s plans—and may even have been perceived by Baku as some sort of pressure. In response, Baku intensified its statements regarding the preconditions it had put forward—a change in Armenia’s Constitution and joint steps to dismantle the OSCE Minsk Group. Moreover, in terms of their significance for Azerbaijan, these preconditions seem to be in no way inferior to the two points that Yerevan eventually agreed to—the mutual dropping of lawsuits in international courts and the absence of third-party forces along the border between the two countries. The only difference in status lies in the fact that some (preconditions for signing) are one-off actions, while others (agreement clauses) determine the nature of long-term relations.
There is another factor that merits attention and testifies to the contradictory nature of the process: Azerbaijan puts forward conditions whose fulfillment, on the one hand, implies consistency and a government with a high degree of legitimacy, but, on the other hand, contains risks for Armenia’s political stability. At the same time, the experience of the incomplete five-year post-war period prompted Baku that raising the stakes in the settlement process pays off. As Azerbaijan solves another issue in its confrontation with Armenia, it formulates new demands. As a reason for adopting a more rigid stance, Baku points to a time limit for the acceptance of certain suggested steps, which, in their view, is consistently violated by Armenia.
The first signal to update the agenda of the trilateral statement from November 9/10, 2020 was sent by the president of the Republic of Azerbaijan in early 2021, when Ilham Aliyev proposed signing a peace treaty. On March 14, 2022, Azerbaijani Foreign Ministry outlined five key principles for normalizing relations with Armenia. These principles were sent to the Armenian side on February 21 and, as assured by Yerevan, were received by them on March 11.
The principles were, in essence, a framework document on the normalization of official relations between any two states, without reflecting the specifics of the conflict:
– recognition of each other’s sovereignty, territorial integrity, inviolability of internationally recognized borders and political independence;
– mutual assurance by both states of the absence of territorial claims against each other and a de jure commitment not to make such claims in the future;
– a commitment to refrain from jeopardizing each other’s security in interstate relations, including through the use or threat of force against one another’s political independence and territorial integrity, as well as from other actions incompatible with the goals of the UN Charter;
– delimitation and demarcation of state borders and establishment of diplomatic relations; – unblocking transport and other communications, creating new relevant communications and cooperating in other areas of mutual interest.
In contrast, Armenia’s response included points that considered the recent history of the Armenian-Azerbaijani confrontation. In particular, these points underlined that Armenian side’s priority lay in guaranteeing the security of the Armenians of Nagorno-Karabakh, ensuring respect for their rights and freedoms, as well as determining the final status of Nagorno-Karabakh. Reference was made to the right of peoples to self-determination and the need for negotiations under the auspices of the OSCE Minsk Group. The obligations to return the prisoners of war and open communications in line with the November 2020 trilateral statement were also mentioned. At the same time, it was highlighted that Armenia recognized the territorial integrity of the Republic of Azerbaijan under the December 8, 1991 agreement on the establishment of the CIS.
In other words, the two sides pursued different goals. Azerbaijan strove to swiftly consolidate the outcomes of the 44-Day War and sought unconditional acknowledgement of the restoration of its territorial integrity. Conversely, Armenia tried to revert to the logic of the pre-war negotiation process to a certain extent. Yerevan’s position was likely influenced by the mistaken belief that the presence of Russian peacekeepers in a part of the territory of the former Nagorno-Karabakh Autonomous Oblast was unlimited in time (or, at least, guaranteed until November 2025), while the EU’s mediation initiative of December 2021 enabled counting on the continuance of the process without significant new losses. Armenian diplomacy, therefore, did not see an issue with burdening the general principles for the normalization of relations with additional details. This was particularly the case, as the pre-election promises of the ruling “Civil Contract” party regarding the application of the principle of “Remedial secession” and the return of the lost territories of the former NKAO under the control of Stepanakert were still fresh.
Looking at today’s realities, Azerbaijan’s initial proposal, had it remained in effect, would have probably seemed close to ideal to Nikol Pashinyan. Yet, after the military operation in September 2023, Ilham Aliyev stopped rushing, no longer refraining from supplementing the draft peace treaty with new points and preconditions. The realization of the futility of such a development in light of the proposals to the Azerbaijani side outlined in Pashinyan’s articles published by “Armenpress” and in written messages that went, one might say, unanswered by Baku, seems to have led Yerevan to withdraw its objections to the two unresolved points.
The missed opportunities in the early stages of the Armenian and Azerbaijani sides moving towards each other were not limited to the failure of the five-point framework agreement, which, if signed, could have created an opening for negotiations on specific issues. One cannot rule out that in the early post-war stage, there was a chance to discuss the conditions for preserving the Armenian population of NK without using the word “status,” which is a source of irritation for Azerbaijan. This was obstructed by the unfounded complacency, as highlighted above, primarily among Karabakh Armenians themselves, instilled by the presence of Russian peacekeepers and their control over the Lachin Corridor. A certain degree of detachment by Yerevan from this issue did not contribute to the search for solutions either.
In this context, Armenian side’s unwillingness to discuss with Baku the issue of reciprocal installation of checkpoints—both at the entrance to the Lachin Corridor and the territory of Meghri region from “mainland” Azerbaijan and Nakhichevan—appeared entirely irrational. And after Baku, having received no response to its proposal, unilaterally set up a border checkpoint on the Hakari river, Armenian officials, including the prime minister, introduced the stereotype of “illegal checkpoint.” Meanwhile, they did not bother to explain why a neighboring country, whose territorial integrity was recognized by Yerevan under the Almaty Declaration (see above), could not install a checkpoint at the site of the former administrative border between the two Soviet republics. It was an equal delusion to use as an argument the trilateral statement of November 9/10, 2020, where the term “corridor” was used for Lachin, accompanied by a pretty specific description of Russian peacekeepers’ role, but not for Meghri. Meanwhile, the most significant difference between the two transport communications, according to paragraphs 3 and 9 of the statement, was that the Russian military’s operation in the case of Lachin was time-bound, whereas there were no time restrictions in the case of Meghri. This circumstance held more weight than the questionable allusions to the extraterritoriality in paragraph 3. These paragraphs, with their underlying discrepancies, can now be extensively and rightly criticized, but they are as they are, and, given the true state of affairs, it was more beneficial for Armenian side than for Azerbaijan to introduce equivalent border procedures in both cases in a timely manner.
By failing to engage in a difficult yet necessary dialogue with Baku concerning checkpoints and the preservation of the Armenian population of NK, Yerevan and Karabakh Armenians themselves, in fact, gave Azerbaijan grounds to settle issues with Moscow, gradually advancing their approaches. Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, in turn, meant that it had far less focus on Karabakh, and Armenia increasingly found itself sidelined in this matter. There are grounds to believe that Yerevan overestimated the potential of external influence on the processes, hoping that Armenia’s security and the interests of Karabakh Armenians would be more effectively protected by Russia (until September 2022), and later by the “collective West.” At the same time, Nikol Pashinyan shifted his orientation toward the source of hope twice within less than a month: first, on October 6, he joined the quadripartite statement following the Prague meeting of the European Political Community, making the first time he diverged from the 2021 “Civil Contract” election program and recognized the territorial integrity of Azerbaijan, including Nagorno-Karabakh; however, subsequently, he agreed with Moscow’s idea to postpone the issue of NK’s status to a later time. Obviously, in the second case, it was a sort of trolling in response to the Russian side’s discontent over losing its mediation initiative—as if to say, “I don’t mind delaying the determination of the status; convince Aliyev if you’re able to.” However, this approach backfired on Pashinyan himself: Moscow declared that the ship had sailed the moment Armenian prime minister signed the Prague statement; meanwhile, Baku accused Yerevan of being unable to adhere to its own commitments. Vladimir Putin’s failure to keep the “remote control” of the conflict in his hands proved true at the meeting of RF president with Ilham Aliyev and the RA prime minister in Sochi on October 31, 2022. One can assume that the mass exodus of NK Armenians and the premature pullout of Russian peacekeepers were predetermined at this very meeting, rather than in September 2023. In this and subsequent periods, Azerbaijani diplomacy, in turn, displayed its ability to play on the contradictions between competing negotiation platforms, ultimately advancing decisions that aligned exclusively with its own interests.
At the same time, there can be no assurance that Yerevan’s readiness for direct accords with Azerbaijan, after Baku raised the idea of a peace treaty, would have paved the way for a settlement of the conflict. Armenian leadership’s increased cooperativeness and non-reliance on political pressure from the international community could very well have been perceived by the opposite side as an opportunity to constantly toughen its stance. It would be naive to assume that the new demands put forward by Azerbaijan were formulated situationally. The order in which they occurred reveals that a long-term scenario has been in place. Added to that, the traditionally deep distrust between the parties did not allow for the expectation that this scenario could be abandoned in response to a unilateral manifestation of goodwill—especially considering that the talk of peace was accompanied by incidents on the Armenian-Azerbaijani border and the line of contact in Nagorno-Karabakh, blockades, etc.
A more reliable method in the negotiation process would be focusing on purely practical solutions that benefit both sides and offer a true alternative to using its advantage in power—in the case of Baku—and relying on external interference—in the case of Yerevan. The most apparent direction was and continues to be the opening and development of transport communications in the region—a topic that has been repeatedly written about and discussed throughout the Armenian-Azerbaijani dialogue at various levels. This topic deserves further exploration within the framework of the “Line of Contact” initiative (to be continued).