The talks between Pashinian and Azerbaijani President Ilham hosted by U.S. President Donald Trump at the White House on August 8 resulted in the initialing of an Armenian-Azerbaijani peace treaty. Pashinian also pledged to give the United States exclusive rights to a transit corridor through Armenia demanded by Azerbaijan. Aliyev made clear hours later that the signing of the treaty remains conditional on a change of Armenia’s constitution.
Nevertheless, in a televised address to the nation aired on Monday, Pashinian repeatedly claimed that “peace has been established between Armenia and Azerbaijan.” He made no mention of Baku’s lingering precondition and downplayed the fact that the pre-signed agreement does not call for the release of Armenian prisoners held in Azerbaijan or say how the Armenian-Azerbaijani border will be delineated.
He said instead: “The new logic of peace is that when saying that there are sovereign territories of Armenia that are currently under Azerbaijani control, we must also say that there are sovereign territories of Azerbaijan that are under our control, and this mutual issue must be resolved in the delimitation process.”
U.S. President Donald Trump (C), Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev (L) and Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinian react after signing an agreement in Washington on August 8, 2025.
This remark was construed by Dashnaktsutyun leaders as well as other critics of the Armenian government as a clear sign that Pashinian is intent on ceding more territory to Azerbaijan without receiving anything in return.
“The statement that there are still Azerbaijani territories under our control was meant to prepare for these new concessions,” Ishkhan Saghatelian, the head of Dashnaktsutyun’s governing body in Armenia, said in a Facebook post on Wednesday.
“Moreover, Pashinian essentially announced that Azerbaijani troops will not withdraw from the occupied territories [of Armenia,]” he wrote.
Kristine Vartanian, a parliament deputy from Dashnaktsutyun, likewise accused Pashinian of seeking to legitimize “Azerbaijani territorial claims” to Armenia.
“Azerbaijan has turned all its demands and preconditions into an agreement, whereas those who represent the Armenian side have failed to gain anything in return,” she told RFE/RL’s Armenian Service on Tuesday.
Although Pashinian did not specify which Azerbaijani territory he believes is under Armenian control, he most probably referred to several enclaves inside Armenia which were controlled by Azerbaijan in Soviet times and occupied by the Armenian army in the early 1990s. The Azerbaijani side seized at the time a bigger Armenian enclave as well as large swathes of agricultural land belonging to border communities in Armenia’s northern Tavush province. It occupied more Armenian territory during border clashes in 2021 and 2022.
Armenia - A new border fence in Tavush province built after a land transfer to Azerbaijan, July 6, 2024.
Pashinian’s government controversially ceded four other border areas to Azerbaijan last year, sparking massive anti-government demonstrations in Yerevan. Protest leaders backed by the Armenian opposition said that the unilateral land transfer will encourage Baku to demand further Armenian concessions.
The draft peace treaty publicized on August 11 commits the two South Caucasus nations to recognizing each other’s territorial integrity. It says that they will be “guided” by the 1991 Alma-Ata Declaration in which newly independent ex-Soviet republics recognized each other’s Soviet-era borders. Pashinian portrayed this reference as a key guarantee of peace.
The Azerbaijani Foreign Ministry downplayed last October the legal significance of that declaration, saying that it “has nothing to do with the question of where the borders of CIS member states lie and which territories belong to which country.” Yerevan deplored that statement at the time, saying it “may mean that Azerbaijan has territorial claims to Armenia.”
Pashinian’s domestic critics say that the treaty touted by Pashinian will not preclude a future Azerbaijani aggression against Armenian even if Baku agrees to sign it. The main opposition Hayastan alliance, of which Dashnaktsutyun is a key component, charged on August 12 that Pashinian’s agreements with Aliyev and Trump will not bring real peace and will on the contrary create a “new existential threat” to Armenia.