Vice President JD Vance arrived in Armenia on Monday, where he met Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan and signed an agreement intended to move negotiations forward on a civil nuclear energy deal, as the Trump administration worked on what it described as a U.S.-brokered path toward an end to fighting with Azerbaijan. Vance’s trip, described by the Associated Press as the first visit to Armenia by a sitting U.S. vice president or president, comes as the two neighbors remain short of a final peace framework even after signing major commitments.
Vance told reporters that the United States was ready to export advanced computer chips and surveillance drones to Armenia, and to invest in the country’s infrastructure. Before departing, Vance also said “Peace is not made by cautious people,” and added that “Peace is made by people who are too focused on the past” and “Peace is made by people who are focused on the future,” as he planned to travel to Azerbaijan on Tuesday.
The Armenia-U.S. talks with Pashinyan included what the agreement is meant to accomplish for Washington’s wider diplomacy: advancing negotiations tied to civil nuclear cooperation while reinforcing the administration’s economic and technology goals. Pashinyan, for his part, expressed gratitude toward President Donald Trump and Vance and said he had accepted an invitation to participate in the first meeting of Trump’s Board of Peace on Feb. 19 in Washington, a panel described as overseeing a ceasefire plan in Gaza.
The trip’s diplomatic timeline traces back to an August agreement between Pashinyan and Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev that was signed at the White House. The Associated Press reported that the leaders’ August accord reaffirmed their commitment to signing a peace treaty, with the treaty text initialed by foreign ministers, indicating preliminary approval—while leaving the countries without a signed treaty and without parliamentary ratification.
That treaty process, as AP described it, is linked to a proposed “major transit corridor dubbed the Trump Route for International Peace and Prosperity.” The plan is expected to connect Azerbaijan with its autonomous Nakhchivan exclave, which are separated by a 32-kilometer-wide (20-mile-wide) strip of Armenian territory, a geography that has long shaped the conflict’s stakes.
The decades-long dispute is rooted in the Karabakh region, internationally known as Nagorno-Karabakh. The Associated Press said that the region had been under the control of ethnic Armenian forces backed by Armenia since 1994, and that a six-week war in 2020 left Azerbaijan regaining control of parts of the region and surrounding areas. After Azerbaijan later regained full control of Karabakh following a September 2023 blitz, AP reported that most of the region’s approximately 120,000 Armenian residents fled to Armenia.
In remarks during the visit, Vance emphasized political support in Armenia’s upcoming elections, and he also said Armenia was among the oldest countries to have identified as Christian. Armenian and American flags hung as the delegation traveled to the meeting, AP reported, and demonstrators were present along the route, including one holding a sign asking, “Does Trump support Devils?”
Vance and his wife, Usha, arrived in Yerevan after spending four days in Milan at the Winter Olympics with their family.