The Armenia–Azerbaijan normalisation track

Summary

Since the November 2020 trilateral statement, Armenia and Azerbaijan have conducted a negotiation covering a peace treaty, border delimitation and the reopening of transport links. Mediation has shifted repeatedly — Russian, then EU and US, with periods of direct bilateral contact — and the parties have at times preferred formats that exclude one or another external actor. The substantive results to date are real and partial: the text of a peace treaty was agreed in March 2025; a first delimitation of about a dozen kilometres in the Tavush direction was completed in 2024, involving the transfer of four villages to Azerbaijani control; and a declaration was signed in Washington in August 2025. Signature of the treaty itself remains outstanding, with Azerbaijan conditioning it on Armenian constitutional amendment. The transport question — specifically any connection between Azerbaijan and its Nakhchivan exclave across southern Armenia — remains unresolved, with Armenia rejecting extraterritorial arrangements and Iran objecting to any change in the border configuration. The Armenia–Türkiye normalisation track runs in parallel with its own special representatives and has produced no border opening.

Why it matters

This is the module's principal live diplomatic file and the one on which its Policy view turns. It is also the clearest case in Vigil of the distinction between an agreed text and a concluded settlement: everything about the situation is better than it was in 2020, and nothing about it is finished. How the transport chapter resolves will determine whether the region's connectivity changes materially or whether the closed borders persist as they have for thirty years.

Stated objectives

What the participants say. Each entry cites where the position was stated; Vigil records that it was made, not that it is true.

• Both parties state a peace treaty based on mutual recognition of territorial integrity within Soviet-era administrative borders as the objective, and both confirmed agreement on the text in March 2025.

  as of 2025-03Sources: Official government statements · Reuters

• Azerbaijan states that signature requires Armenian constitutional amendment removing what it describes as an implicit territorial claim.

  as of 2026-06Sources: Official government statements · International Crisis Group

• Armenia states that any transport connection must operate under Armenian sovereignty and jurisdiction, contrasting reciprocal access with an extraterritorial corridor.

  as of 2026-06Sources: Official government statements · International Crisis Group

Assessed objectives

Vigil's reading, graded. Kept structurally apart from stated positions so an assessment can never be published as someone's declared aim.

• The negotiation is asymmetric: Azerbaijan negotiates from military advantage and physical control, and delay costs it comparatively little, which shapes the pace more than any procedural factor.

  Confidence: ModerateSources: International Crisis Group · Carnegie Russia Eurasia Center analyses

• The August 2025 Washington declaration is read by several analysts as reformulating the transport question in terms compatible with Armenian sovereignty, which would leave Iran's objection addressed rather than tested. Vigil records this as an assessment of a document whose full operational content is not public.

  Confidence: LowSources: Eurasianet · International Crisis Group

• The Armenia–Türkiye track's dependence on this one is a matter of sequencing rather than of formal linkage, and neither Ankara nor Baku has stated a formal condition connecting them.

  Confidence: ModerateSources: International Crisis Group · RFE/RL (Radio Free Europe / Radio Liberty)

Supporting & external

• Turkish defence partnership with Azerbaijan External supporter · Confidence: Moderate · as of 2026-06

  Azerbaijan's principal external partner, and the counterparty in the separate Armenia–Türkiye track.

Affected parties

• Armenian Armed Forces Affected party · Confidence: Moderate · as of 2026-06

  Named as a party to the delimitation and incident-prevention elements. This is a negotiated process, not an engagement between the participants.

• Azerbaijani Armed Forces Affected party · Confidence: Moderate · as of 2026-06
• Russian peacekeeping contingent in Karabakh (2020–2024) Affected party · Confidence: High · as of 2024-06

  Deployed under the arrangement that opened this track and withdrawn in 2024. Retained as a historical participant in the process.

Outcome and present status

Ongoing and genuinely unresolved. The track has produced more than any comparable process in the region's recent history — an agreed text, a functioning delimitation mechanism, a signed declaration and the withdrawal of a third-party force — and has not produced a signed treaty, an open border or a transport agreement. The constitutional condition and the transport question are the two obstacles, and neither has an evident solution that both parties have accepted. Vigil records the process as live rather than as either succeeding or failing.

Observed adaptations

• The parties have increasingly negotiated bilaterally, with external actors hosting rather than mediating, which is a change from the format that operated for the previous three decades.

  as of 2026-06Confidence: ModerateSources: International Crisis Group · Eurasianet

• Delimitation has proceeded by small sections with local implementation rather than by comprehensive agreement, which has proved workable where attempted and slow.

  as of 2026-06Confidence: ModerateSources: International Crisis Group · RFE/RL (Radio Free Europe / Radio Liberty)

Political implications

The module's principal live file, and the one that determines whether the region's post-2023 configuration stabilises.

Economic implications

The transport chapter is the largest single economic variable in the region; its resolution or failure decides whether the closed borders persist.

Humanitarian implications

Detainees, the missing and return arrangements sit within or alongside this track and can move independently of the treaty.

Linked events

Locations

Places this module already publishes as map markers, listed because the campaign is about them. Not an operational area.

Reference layers

What remains unknown

• The agreed treaty text has not been published; this record describes it from the parties' characterisations rather than from the document.
• The full operational content of the August 2025 Washington declaration is not public, which is why assessments of what it settles are graded low.
• The content of the parallel Armenia–Türkiye special-representative talks is not published.
• Incident reporting along the undelimited border is provided by the parties and is not independently verified.

Readings the evidence also supports

• Azerbaijan's constitutional condition can be read as a genuine requirement for a durable treaty or as a mechanism for deferring signature while the current balance holds. Both are argued and the record supports each.
• The coupling of the Armenia–Türkiye track to this one can be read as Azerbaijani leverage, as Turkish domestic caution using Baku as cover, or as natural sequencing between related files. No formal linkage has been stated by any party, and this module keeps the two tracks separate for that reason.

Listed because the record's own assessment is not the only one its sources permit — not as a hedge on the assessment above.