The heaviest violence since their 2020 conflict broke out after what US House Speaker Nancy Pelosi called an “illegal” attack by Azerbaijan on Armenia on Sunday. More least 200 people lost their lives in border clashes on Tuesday, and Baku and Yerevan have each claimed responsibility for sparking them. She continued, “The attack constituted an assault on the sovereignty of Armenia.” According to Alen Simonyan, speaker of the Armenian parliament, fighting between the two longtime adversaries in the Caucasus came to a halt overnight on Thursday as a result of American intervention.
Russia has failed in the past attempts to mediate a ceasefire.
Alongside Pelosi, he told reporters, “We are grateful to the United States for the accord of the tenuous ceasefire obtained through their mediation.”
Ilham Aliyev, the president of Azerbaijan, also met with US Secretary of State Antony Blinken on Sunday, the State Department reported.
Pelosi’s visit signals a closer relationship between Washington and Yerevan, where resentment is rising over Moscow, Armenia’s longtime friend, which is preoccupied with its nearly seven-month war in Ukraine.
Despite a formal request for military assistance, Russia held off on providing assistance because of its close relations to Baku and its treaty commitment to defend Armenia in the case of an invasion from abroad.
The highest-ranking US official to visit Armenia since the tiny republic earned independence from the Soviet Union in 1991 is Pelosi, who landed in Yerevan on Saturday for a three-day trip.
A weeping Pelosi lay flowers at the hilltop memorial in Yerevan honouring the 1.5 million Armenians who died in the Ottoman Empire during World War I on Sunday morning.
Armenia has long pushed for international recognition of the bloodletting as genocide; Turkey has vehemently refuted this accusation, but many other nations agree.
After US President Joe Biden formally recognised the Armenian genocide last year, Pelosi said she was “honoured” to visit Yerevan.
Two battles between Armenia and Azerbaijan, one in the 1990s and the other in 2020, were fought over Nagorno-Karabakh, an area of Azerbaijan that is home to Armenians.
“In the Congress, we consider (Baku’s ally) Turkey responsible — as well as Azerbaijan — for the violence that exists in Nagorno-Karabakh,” Pelosi said in a statement.
