Vance is in Armenia, a country no sitting U.S. president or vice president has visited before

Demonstrators in Armenia call on U.S. Vice President JD Vance to secure the release of former Karabakh officials in Azerbaijan.

YEREVAN, Armenia — U.S. Vice President JD Vance landed in Armenia on Monday — a country that no sitting U.S. vice president or president has visited before — as the Trump administration looks to advance a U.S.-brokered deal aimed at ending a decades-long conflict with Azerbaijan.

The vice president and his wife, Usha, were greeted with a red carpet, an honor guard and a delegation of officials. Armenian and American flags hung from poles from as the delegation drove to the vice president’s meeting, with some demonstrators on the side of the road, including one with a sign that said, “Does Trump support Devils?”

Vance met with Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan, who signed a deal at the White House in August intended to reopen key transportation routes with Azerbaijan. At that meeting, the countries signed agreements reaffirming their commitment to signing a peace treaty. The text of the treaty was initialed by foreign ministers, which indicates preliminary approval. But the leaders have yet to sign the treaty and parliaments have yet to ratify it.

“The prime minister has been a great friend of ours and a real ally in peace and development in this region (of) the world,” Vance said at the start of their meeting. “This is, of course, one of the oldest Christian cultures in the entire world, and so I feel a great amount of affinity to the people of Armenia, but also to you and to your administration.”

Pashinyan expressed his gratitude toward President Donald Trump and Vance.

“We are very close to that point, if not there yet,” he said, “of no return” in the pursuit of peace.

Vance arrived in Yerevan after spending four days in Milan at the Winter Olympics with his family, and plans to travel to Azerbaijan on Tuesday.

Pashinyan and Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev are both on President Donald Trump’s new Board of Peace. The group was originally envisioned to oversee the Gaza ceasefire plan, but has since expanded in size and ambition. Trump plans to convene the first meeting of the board in Washington this month.

The deal with the two former Soviet republics calls for the creation of a major transit corridor dubbed the Trump Route for International Peace and Prosperity. It is expected to connect Azerbaijan and its autonomous Nakhchivan exclave, which are separated by a 32-kilometer-wide (20-mile-wide) patch of Armenian territory.

The land bridge had been a sticking point in resolving a conflict that lasted for nearly four decades over control of the Karabakh region, known internationally as Nagorno-Karabakh. The region had been under the control of ethnic Armenian forces backed by Armenia since 1994. A six-week war in 2020 resulted in Azerbaijan regaining control of parts of the region and the surrounding areas. In September 2023, Azerbaijan launched a blitz that forced the separatist authorities to capitulate. After Azerbaijan regained full control of Karabakh, most of its 120,000 Armenian residents fled to Armenia.

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Associated Press writers Josh Boak in Washington and Daria Litvinova in Tallinn contributed to this report.

By Michelle L. Price