JD Vance arrived in Armenia on February 9, becoming the first sitting US vice president to visit the country, as Washington seeks to deepen economic ties while pushing to finalise a US-brokered peace deal between Armenia and Azerbaijan after nearly four decades of conflict.

The visit follows a White House peace summit in August between Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan and Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev, hosted by US President Donald Trump. The peace treaty text has been initialled by foreign ministers, signalling preliminary approval, but has yet to be signed by the leaders or ratified by parliaments.

Vance held talks with Pashinyan in Yerevan, where the two sides signed an agreement to advance negotiations on a civil nuclear energy project. Vance said the US was ready to export advanced computer chips and surveillance drones to Armenia and invest in the country’s infrastructure.

In an official statement, Pashinyan described Vance’s trip as a milestone. “Your visit is truly historic, because you are the first Vice President of the United States and the highest-ranking official of the United States to ever visit the Republic of Armenia,” he said, adding that it reflected the deepening of bilateral ties over the past year.

Pashinyan thanked Trump and Vance for hosting the August summit, saying it had “resulted in peace between Armenia and Azerbaijan” and that recent talks with Aliyev in Abu Dhabi suggested the process was nearing an irreversible stage.

“Our impression is that this peace … is already very close to the point, if not already crossed, that we can consider irreversible,” he said.

He said the priority now was to implement key elements of the US-backed peace framework, including a flagship infrastructure plan known as the TRIPP project.

Vance said Armenia could emerge as a regional economic hub if the peace deal is secured.

“I truly believe that you have the opportunity to not only establish a historic, lasting, irreversible peace, but we are now at a point where Armenia will become a very serious economic development hub in this region,” he said.

He added that he was “honoured to be the first vice president to visit Armenia” and praised what he called Pashinyan’s partnership with Washington.

The August agreement between the two former Soviet republics envisages the creation of a major transit corridor, dubbed the Trump Route for International Peace and Prosperity, linking Azerbaijan to its Nakhchivan exclave through a 32-kilometre (20-mile) stretch of Armenian territory.

The proposed land bridge had long been a major obstacle to ending the conflict over Nagorno-Karabakh, a region internationally recognised as part of Azerbaijan but controlled by ethnic Armenian forces backed by Armenia since the early 1990s.

A six-week war in 2020 saw Azerbaijan regain large areas of the territory and surrounding districts. In September 2023, Azerbaijani forces launched a swift offensive that forced the separatist authorities to surrender. After Baku reasserted full control, most of Karabakh’s roughly 120,000 Armenian residents fled to Armenia.

Armenian officials said Vance and Pashinyan were also briefed on the TRIPP project’s implementation, a plan by US-linked Firebird to build an artificial intelligence factory and data centre in Armenia, as well as the capabilities of the V-BAT unmanned aerial vehicle purchased by Yerevan from the United States.

Washington says the package of economic and security initiatives is designed to anchor the peace process and integrate Armenia more deeply into regional trade and technology networks.