{"id":221885,"date":"2025-12-29T10:31:14","date_gmt":"2025-12-29T06:31:14","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/abcmedia.am\/?p=221885"},"modified":"2025-12-29T14:52:12","modified_gmt":"2025-12-29T10:52:12","slug":"peace-in-words-aliyev-talks-peace-while-preparing-for-war-kommersant-writes","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/abcmedia.am\/en\/politics\/221885\/","title":{"rendered":"Peace in words: Aliyev talks peace while preparing for war, Kommersant writes"},"content":{"rendered":"<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC \"-\/\/W3C\/\/DTD HTML 4.0 Transitional\/\/EN\" \"http:\/\/www.w3.org\/TR\/REC-html40\/loose.dtd\">\n<html><body><p>In 2025, the South Caucasus witnessed a long-awaited development that brought the region closer to resolving one of the longest-running post-Soviet conflicts: Armenia and Azerbaijan finally agreed to sign a peace treaty. Rather than assigning the role of chief mediator to Moscow, Yerevan and Baku turned to Donald Trump, who unexpectedly showed interest in the region.<\/p>\n<p>Despite this progress, the leaders of Armenia and Azerbaijan gave no indication of when the treaty would be formally signed, instead using the development to advance their own agendas&mdash;or at least attempting to do so, reports <a href=\"https:\/\/www.kommersant.ru\/doc\/8315244?query=%D0%B0%D1%80%D0%BC%D0%B5%D0%BD%D0%B8%D1%8F\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Kommersant<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>Previously signed agreements were largely ignored, and after decades of joint consultations and trilateral discussions, Armenia and Azerbaijan effectively sidelined Russia from the peace process.<\/p>\n<p>According to Azerbaijan, the main obstacle to signing the peace treaty for many years was Armenia&rsquo;s constitution. Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan has repeatedly spoken about the need to amend the constitution, stressing that this is not in response to Azerbaijan&rsquo;s demands but rather reflects Armenia&rsquo;s desire to adapt to new geopolitical realities.<\/p>\n<p>However, Pashinyan&rsquo;s options are limited. Any constitutional amendment would require a referendum, which, even if held, would not take place until the summer of 2026, when parliamentary elections are scheduled in Armenia. Given his already low approval ratings, it is unlikely that Pashinyan&rsquo;s government would hold a referendum on such a contentious issue before the vote.<\/p>\n<p>For now, Pashinyan is making significant efforts to present the agreed-upon peace treaty as a major achievement and position his government as its guarantor.<\/p>\n<p>At the same time, Ilham Aliyev states that even if peace is established in the region, the country will never cease preparing for a possible war. The main agreement&mdash;peace&mdash;has yet to be formalized, and the process appears likely to be delayed indefinitely.<\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>In 2025, the South Caucasus witnessed a long-awaited development that brought the region closer to resolving one of the longest-running post-Soviet conflicts: Armenia and Azerbaijan finally agreed to sign a peace treaty. Rather than assigning the role of chief mediator to Moscow, Yerevan and Baku turned to Donald Trump, who unexpectedly showed interest in the [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":7,"featured_media":171764,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"inline_featured_image":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[35,43,95,98,57],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-221885","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-politics","category-world","category-azerbeijan","category-other-en","category-top-news"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/abcmedia.am\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/221885","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/abcmedia.am\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/abcmedia.am\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/abcmedia.am\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/7"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/abcmedia.am\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=221885"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/abcmedia.am\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/221885\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":221886,"href":"https:\/\/abcmedia.am\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/221885\/revisions\/221886"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/abcmedia.am\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/171764"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/abcmedia.am\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=221885"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/abcmedia.am\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=221885"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/abcmedia.am\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=221885"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}