NEWS ALERT: Trump brokers ANOTHER big peace deal, a ‘geopolitical blow’ to Russia

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President Donald J. Trump met at the White House on Friday with the leaders of Armenia and Azerbaijan as they took the first steps to end nearly four decades of conflict.

The agreement will create a major transit corridor, the White House said, a solution to one of the most pressing issues between the countries.

REUTERS reports:

White House spokeswoman Anna Kelly told reporters that Trump would sign separate deals with both Armenia and Azerbaijan on energy, technology, economic cooperation, border security, infrastructure and trade.

The agreement includes exclusive U.S. development rights to a strategic transit corridor through the South Caucasus, dubbed the “Trump Route for International Peace and Prosperity.”

The agreement came after repeated meetings, meant to pave the way toward peaceful dealings between the countries, that brought together Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev and Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan.

Armenia and Azerbaijan have been in conflict since the late 1980s when Nagorno-Karabakh, a mountainous Azerbaijani region predominantly inhabited by ethnic Armenians, seceded from Azerbaijan with Armenian support.

Both Armenia and Azerbaijan gained independence from the Soviet Union in 1991.

In 2023, Azerbaijan regained full control of Nagorno-Karabakh through a military offensive, resulting in the displacement of nearly all of the territory’s remaining 100,000 Armenians to Armenia.

One particularly contentious issue was the delineation of shared borders and Baku’s request for a constitutional amendment in Yerevan, which includes a reference to a 1989 call for the reunification of Armenia and Nagorno-Karabakh, which was then an autonomous region within Soviet Azerbaijan, Reuters reported.

The AP further reports:

Announcing the agreement between Armenia and Azerbaijan, Trump said it had “solved the key issue” by establishing “what they are calling the Trump Route for International Peace and Prosperity.”

Trump said naming the route after him was “a great honor for me” and “I didn’t ask for this.”

A senior administration official, on a call before the event with reporters, said that it was actually the Armenians that suggested the name.

The agreement is set to create a new trade and transit corridor named for Trump that will connect mainland Azerbaijan with the autonomous Nakhchivan region.

That route will connect Azerbaijan and its autonomous Nakhchivan exclave, which sit on either side of a 20-mile-wide territory owned by Armenia.

This demand from Azerbaijan is what held up peace talks in the past.

The AP notes, “The deal between the two former Soviet republics also strikes a geopolitical blow to their former imperial master, Russia. Throughout the nearly four-decade conflict, Moscow played mediator to expand its clout in the strategic South Caucasus region, but its influence waned quickly after it launched the full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022”

Trump, sitting with the leaders of the long-fighting countries in the State Dining Room at the White House on Friday, said they had just had signed “voluminous documents” related to the peace deal

The leaders both gave brief remarks, thanking Trump.

Aliyev said that Trump was bringing “peace” in the Caucasus region, “and we are grateful for that.”

Pashinyan called the deal a success “for our countries and for our region and a success for the world” and commended Trump for his “legacy as a statesman and the peacemaker.”

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