Armenia says Yerevan, Baku likely to sign peace treaty by end of 2023

“Negotiations are going very intensively, if we maintain this intensity and there is strong support from the international community to achieve progress, then there is a chance to have a peace agreement by the end of the year,” Grigoryan told Armenia’s First Channel.

The Armenian side intends to achieve the conclusion of a peace treaty as soon as possible, Grigoryan added.

Grigoryan also noted that the country’s membership in the Collective Security Treaty Organization (CSTO) creates “certain problems” for Yerevan, but they do not limit cooperation with other countries.

“We are working intensively with our Western partners to strengthen our security cooperation and will continue this work,” Grigoryan continued.

The decades-long conflict between Armenia and Azerbaijan over Nagorno-Karabakh flared up in September 2020, marking the worst escalation since the 1990s. Hostilities ended with a Russia-brokered trilateral ceasefire declaration signed in November 2020. The two former Soviet states agreed to the deployment of Russian peacekeepers in the region. Since then, there have been occasional clashes along the border.

In mid-May, Grigoryan said that the Armenian government mulled leaving the CSTO, adding that the organization’s mechanism did not work properly and the member states failed to fulfill their commitments. Armenian Deputy Foreign Minister Mnatsakan Safaryan said later that the possibility of Armenia withdrawing from the CSTO is not currently on the agenda. Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan has also repeatedly said that Yerevan witnessed the organization’s inaction in 2021-2022.