Armenia and Azerbaijan: a peace that trades before it signs

Fourteen months after the Washington summit, Armenia and Azerbaijan are trading, shipping fuel and grain across a closed front line and meeting on the margins of other people's summits. What they have not done is sign the peace agreement they initialled in August 2025. The obstacle is no longer the text, which both sides accept. It is a sequencing dispute over Armenia's constitution, and behind that a piece of parliamentary arithmetic in Yerevan that neither government can wish away.

The practical track is real and worth defending. But it is running ahead of the legal one, and the gap between the two is where the risks now sit.

Where the agreement stands

The Agreement on the Establishment of Peace and Inter-State Relations was initialled by the two foreign ministers at the White House on 8 August 2025, alongside a joint declaration signed by Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan and President Ilham Aliyev. It has not been signed, and so it has not been ratified or entered into force. Nothing in the public record for September 2026 suggests a signing date.

On 10 August 2026 the United States, Armenia and Azerbaijan issued a joint statement marking the anniversary. It listed what had been done without a treaty: the OSCE Minsk Group and its related structures dissolved at the joint request of both states; close to 60,000 tonnes of goods carried to and from Armenia through Azerbaijan; 20,000 tonnes of Azerbaijani oil products supplied to Armenia; and $201 million committed by Washington to a Trans-Caspian Enterprise Fund for private investment in the region. It also recorded that engineering surveys for the Trump Route for International Peace and Prosperity (TRIPP) were under way in Armenia.

Pashinyan and Aliyev met again on 31 August on the sidelines of the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation summit in Bishkek. Their readout, as carried by Armenia's Public Radio, named petroleum exports, the transit of third-country grain and the start of bilateral trade as practical signs of peace, and restated support for TRIPP and for the border commissions. It announced no new agreement and no date for a signature.

Baku's condition and Yerevan's answer

Azerbaijan's position has not moved. Speaking on 9 September on the sidelines of Baku Climate Action Week, Foreign Minister Jeyhun Bayramov said the timing of Armenia's referendum was an internal matter, but that completing the process "includes holding a referendum in Armenia and adopting a new Constitution". Before putting final signatures on the agreement, he said, Baku would "naturally await the completion of these steps". He tied this to the Washington statement's call to finalise the necessary steps after initialling.

The objection is to the preamble of Armenia's current constitution, which refers to the 1990 Declaration of Independence, and through it to the 1989 decision on the unification of Soviet Armenia and Nagorno-Karabakh. Baku treats that chain of references as a territorial claim.

Yerevan's answer has two parts that sit awkwardly together. On substance, Pashinyan has moved towards Baku's reading. On 24 August he said there should be no reference to the 1990 Declaration in a new constitution, because keeping it would mean continuing the Karabakh movement and "returning to the logic of conflict". He presents this as a domestic agenda dating from 2020, not a concession. On procedure, the government refuses any linkage. After the Bishkek meeting he told his cabinet that "the Constitution is not on our agenda" with Azerbaijan, and that Armenia does not discuss its constitution with foreign partners.

Both positions can be true at once, and the ambiguity has been useful to both leaders. Baku can say its condition is being met. Yerevan can say it is acting on its own reasons. The difficulty is that the ambiguity does not change the timetable.

The arithmetic in Yerevan

The preamble cannot be edited by ordinary amendment. It requires a new constitution adopted by referendum, and the current text requires the draft to be approved first by two-thirds of all members of the National Assembly. The June election gave Pashinyan's Civil Contract 64 of 105 seats, a comfortable governing majority and six short of the 70 needed.

The two opposition blocs, Strong Armenia and the Armenia Alliance, have said they will block constitutional change, arguing that concessions invite further demands, Azatutyun reported after the vote. Asked whether the parliamentary step could be bypassed, Justice Minister Srbuhi Galyan said the two-thirds rule is in the constitution but that the right to a referendum is "also a direct right that the people have", and declined to elaborate. A co-author of the current constitution, Vardan Poghosyan, told Azatutyun that any route around parliament would be illegal.

The government says the draft text will be published in the coming months. Even on an optimistic view, publication, consultation, a parliamentary vote the government does not yet control and a national campaign put a referendum in 2027 at the earliest. The vote itself is a further hurdle: a constitutional referendum that becomes a verdict on the peace terms could fail, and a failed referendum would leave the treaty with no obvious path.

What is moving without a signature

The case for patience rests on what has happened while the treaty waits. Fuel and third-country grain now cross from Azerbaijan into Armenia, and the Bishkek readout spoke of trade relations being established between the two countries. The Minsk Group, for three decades the main mediation format, no longer exists. The anniversary statement records that the border has remained stable.

TRIPP has moved from announcement to law. Armenia's Constitutional Court ruled on 15 September, in a decision reported by Armenpress on 16 September, that the obligations in the Armenia–US framework agreement comply with the constitution. The agreement now goes to the National Assembly for ratification. As of 30 September no vote had been reported.

Border delimitation is slower. The two state commissions, chaired by Deputy Prime Ministers Mher Grigoryan and Shahin Mustafayev, met for the 13th time in Aghveran on 29 April and agreed draft guidelines on expert groups, delimitation maps and documents, to be approved by each government. The next meeting was to be in Azerbaijan, on a date to be agreed. No further meeting had been publicly reported by the end of September.

What the practical track cannot settle

Normalisation without a treaty leaves three questions open. The first is enforcement. EVN Report noted when the text was initialled that it contains no guarantee mechanism and leaves the areas Armenia says Azerbaijani forces have held since 2021–22, over 200 square kilometres by its count, to the delimitation process. Until the commissions produce maps, that dispute has no other agreed forum.

The second is the detainees. EVN Report also noted that the release of Armenians held in Azerbaijan is not addressed in the initialled text, and the issue remains politically sharp in Yerevan.

The third is sequencing. Each practical gain is revocable in a way a ratified treaty is not. Transit can be suspended and fuel contracts allowed to lapse. For now both governments have an interest in keeping them going, and both have said so. But the longer signature waits on a referendum, the more the process depends on the continuity of two leaders and of American attention.

What to watch

Four markers will show whether the gap is closing. The first is publication of the draft constitution, and whether it drops the preamble reference in the form Pashinyan described in August. The second is whether any opposition deputies signal support, or the government tests a route around the two-thirds rule, which would move the fight to the Constitutional Court. The third is the National Assembly's vote on TRIPP and a first physical works contract in Syunik. The fourth is a 14th commission meeting and government approval of the delimitation guidelines.

Policymakers who want the agreement signed should treat it as a two-track problem. The practical track needs protecting from reversal: published transit volumes, predictable customs treatment and a regular commission calendar. The legal track needs a realistic timetable, which means planning around a 2027 referendum rather than a signing this year.

Sources

• US Department of State — Joint Statement of the United States, Armenia and Azerbaijan on the one-year anniversary of the White House Peace Summit (via GlobalSecurity.org)
• Public Radio of Armenia — Pashinyan, Aliyev discuss peace agreement, TRIPP and economic cooperation in Bishkek
• Trend — Azerbaijan highlights progress toward lasting peace with Armenia
• Armenpress — No reference to Declaration of Independence should be made in new Constitution, Pashinyan says
• Aysor — We discussed all the issues on our agenda with the Azerbaijani president, but the Constitution is not on our agenda
• Azatutyun — Armenian Minister Coy About Constitutional Referendum
• Armenpress — Armenia's high court finds TRIPP obligations constitutional ahead of ratification vote
• EVN Report — The Unfinished Peace Deal: Armenia–Azerbaijan Agreement Initialed Yet Unsigned