Washington Declaration Raises Concerns for Armenia's Fate

The declaration signed in Washington by Aliyev and Pashinyan could spell the end of Armenian statehood or at least lead to further loss of territory, analysts believe. The declaration stated that territorial claims against each other would not be made, Pashinyan objected.

As "Caucasian Knot" wrote, at a meeting in Washington on August 8, Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev and Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan signed a declaration on the cessation of hostilities. US President Donald Trump said that the key issue that prevented the signing of a peace agreement between Armenia and Azerbaijan has been resolved, and this is the issue of the Zangezur corridor. The foreign ministers of the two countries have appealed to the OSCE with a proposal to dissolve the Minsk Group.

Documents were voluntarily signed in Washington that effectively marked the end of Armenian statehood, said former Chairman of the State Revenue Committee of Armenia David Ananyan.

“Anyone who still does not understand, does not want to understand, or does not believe that we in Washington voluntarily signed documents that became the harbingers of the end of our state is either naive, or short-sighted, or a conscious or unconscious traitor,” he noted.

According to Ananyan, those who talk about “economic development” and “establishing peace” are not at all harbingers of hope, but “harbingers of doom hidden behind a veil of slogans.” "This is not the beginning of a peace process, but the launch of the process of dismantling the Armenian statehood with all the symbolic and practical consequences," Aysor.Am quotes him as saying.

Aliyev got everything he wanted, "and Pashinyan and Trump got their share of overdosed populism," former Armenian Defense Minister Arshak Karapetyan pointed out.

"You are trying to sell the signed blank sheet to the Armenian people as a peace process. However, in reality, this is a packaged surrender of statehood. This is the real and painful reality," the publication quoted him as saying.

All documents signed in the United States are aimed at satisfying the interests and demands of Azerbaijan and Turkey, said Turkologist and PhD in history Varujan Geghamyan.

"If this were a truly mutually beneficial deal, it would have been announced, for example, that Azerbaijan and Turkey are lifting the blockade of Armenia, liberating Armenian territories, returning prisoners, and much more. However, this is not the case. And it won’t be,” the “Novosti Armenia” agency quoted him as saying.

According to him, the only thing whose mechanisms were more or less clearly described was the “Trump Route.”

“Everything else is just beautiful and non-binding words. All this was done so that the “Zangezur Corridor” imposed on Armenia, agreed upon by the de facto government of Armenia and implying the actual gradual conquest of Syunik, became a reality, albeit in a somewhat more veiled and less frightening form, but essentially the same. The road, first operating with American mediation, and then directly with Turkish mediation, will be the most convenient way to take Meghri and all of Syunik,” he believes.

Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan told reporters that following the meeting in Washington, there can be no talk of “renting” Syunik, emphasizing that the Syunik region was and will remain part of the Republic of Armenia, and this issue was closed with the signed declaration, since it was established at the bilateral level that territorial claims will not be made against each other, the agency reported.

Recall that in January 2024, Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev called the opening of the Zangezur corridor through Armenia to Nakhichevan a condition for opening the border with Armenia. Yerevan never committed to opening the Zangezur corridor to connect the main part of Azerbaijan and Nakhchivan, Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan countered, calling Aliyev’s speech “a serious blow to the peace process.”

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