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Politics

Aliyev and Pashinyan pace out the Trump route in Bishkek

Azerbaijan's president and Armenia's prime minister met on the margins of the SCO summit on 31 August and discussed what both readouts call further practical steps on the TRIPP corridor. For one afternoon the normalisation track between Baku and Yerevan ran through Kyrgyzstan.

Aliyev and Pashinyan pace out the Trump route in Bishkek

Both leaders landed within the same hour, Pashinyan at 14:16 Bishkek time and Aliyev at 14:52, and the first readout was out by 17:02. Baku's APA published it and updated twice by evening, adding that bilateral contacts will continue. Yerevan's version followed a minute later through Armenpress, issued by the prime minister's office.

Neither readout names a step or a document.

The Yerevan readout does the itemising. It anchors the meeting to the Washington declaration of 8 August 2025, lists the dividends as Yerevan counts them, Azerbaijani petroleum products moving to Armenia and grain transiting Azerbaijani territory, and records the border delimitation commissions continuing under the agreements already reached.

On the route itself the language stayed procedural. The leaders discussed, in the readout's words, "further practical steps related to the implementation of the Trump Route for International Peace and Prosperity", and underlined connectivity projects along it. Neither readout names a step or a document. The next test is at home: Armenia's Constitutional Court takes up TRIPP on 15 September.

The Bishkek margins are doing double duty for Yerevan. Pashinyan also met Rahmon and Modi on Monday, and the Kremlin said on Friday that Putin will sit down with him during the summit, with Armenia's European Union plans on the agenda as Moscow frames it. The referendum demand Lavrov made on 28 August hangs over that table; no Armenian reply had surfaced in the wires by Monday evening.

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