U.S. Vice President JD Vance arrived in Armenia on Monday, a country no sitting U.S. president or vice president has visited.

Vance’s trip to Yerevan follows a trip to Italy for the Winter Olympic Games and a visit on Tuesday to Azerbaijan, Armenia’s eastern neighbor and arch geopolitical rival.

In August 2025, Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev and Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan met at the White House to sign a joint declaration that some hoped would pave the way for increased stability in the region. Among other points, the declaration established a U.S. economic interest in the region. It signaled a potential shift by Armenia away from Russia, which has traditionally served as Armenia’s protector and mediator between the two warring countries.

By far the most substantive element of the declaration was the opening of a transportation and communication corridor for Azerbaijan through Armenian territory to its Nakhchivan enclave. Ultimately, the corridor provides Azerbaijan with a direct land route to its ally Türkiye via Nakhchivan’s western border with that country.

Vance’s visit to Armenia and Azerbaijan this week is intended to follow up on the joint declaration, which has yet to become a formal peace agreement. While the respective foreign ministers initialed a draft of the eventual peace treaty, it has not yet been approved by either leader or ratified by parliament.

While the draft agreement is general in nature, it mentions combating intolerance, racism, and violent extremism. Absent from the list of vices to be countered was religious persecution and ethnic cleansing — longstanding practices of the totalitarian Azerbaijan regime.

Also absent from the draft agreement is any commitment to protecting the centuries-old Christian heritage sites captured by Azerbaijan in 2023. Many have experienced significant damage and even been destroyed, according to an analysis of satellite imagery and other research done by a rights group.

While the agreement would commit the countries to “addressing” cases of missing persons and enforced disappearances — possibly a reference to the many Armenian hostages still held by Azerbaijan — the agreement falls short of a commitment to their full return, which rights activists have long demanded.

Azerbaijan seized the large Armenian enclave of Nagorno-Karabakh in September 2023 after years of military aggression. While both countries operate enclaves geographically bound to the other, Nagorno-Karabakh was a particularly sensitive point of disagreement and is home to many ancient Christian heritage sites.

Many of those heritage sites have been desecrated since Azerbaijan seized control of the area, with satellite imagery and research analysis pointing to dozens of sites either destroyed or converted into mosques since the military offensive began in 2021.

Armenia is sandwiched between Azerbaijan to the east and Türkiye to the west. The two countries have long maintained close ties, bound by a shared Turkic ethnicity, the predominance of Islam among their populations, and economic interests. Several major pipelines carry significant amounts of oil and natural gas to and through Türkiye, bypassing Russia and making Azerbaijan a critical economic partner for Europe, especially considering tensions over Russia’s war in Ukraine.

These economic ties have enabled Azerbaijan to aggress against Armenia in ways that could not have been imagined earlier. From 2000 to 2014, Azerbaijan boasted the world’s fastest-growing economy year after year, enabling it to acquire advanced weapons systems and militarily eclipse Armenia.

The pipelines also seem to have emboldened it geopolitically — just months after the decades-long project to build a gas corridor out of Azerbaijan to Europe was completed in 2020, it launched an attack on Armenia to seize Nagorno Karabakh and surrounding territories. While that attack was unsuccessful, Azerbaijan completed the task during its September 2023 blitz.

Speaking to ICC, one expert on Armenia decried the joint declaration as paving over genocide and expressed disappointment at the way a pan-Turkic corridor connecting Türkiye and Azerbaijan — an unrealized goal of the 1915 Armenian genocide — is being cast as a step toward resolution.

Another analyst expressed concern that the agreement could serve to undermine efforts to rescue Armenian hostages held by Azerbaijan and protect vulnerable Christian heritage sites. “Azerbaijan received a major concession in the corridor to Nakhchivan,” he said, “and in return only had to extend the vaguest of assurances regarding Armenia’s territorial sovereignty. What does Armenia have left on the bargaining table to ensure that its citizens are returned and its heritage sites are preserved?”