SUMMARY

Armenia declared its independence in 1991 following the dissolution of the Soviet Union. Located in the Caucasus, Armenia had been involved in a long-standing dispute with Azerbaijan over the Nagorno-Karabakh region, supporting the self-proclaimed Republic of Artsakh until Azerbaijan retook the region in September 2023 and Artsakh formally dissolved on 1 January 2024. The country periodically took part as a secondary warring party in the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict with Azerbaijan, an involvement that typically centered on providing military support to the Republic of Artsakh.

2025

UCDP recorded no organized violence in Armenia in 2025. With the Republic of Artsakh dissolved in the beginning of 2024 and the border with Azerbaijan largely quiet, the year was shaped by the peace process with Azerbaijan, a sharp internal confrontation between the government and the Armenian Apostolic Church, and Armenia's continued drift away from Russia.

In March 2025, Armenia and Azerbaijan announced that they had agreed on the full text of a peace treaty, after Yerevan accepted the last two disputed provisions. On 8 August 2025, at a summit in Washington hosted by United States President Donald Trump, the two countries' foreign ministers initialed the agreed text, while Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan and President Ilham Aliyev did not sign the treaty itself but signed a joint declaration committing to work toward its signing and ratification, alongside bilateral agreements with the United States that included a planned transit route through Armenia's Syunik region, the Trump Route for International Peace and Prosperity. The treaty remained unsigned and unratified at year's end, with Azerbaijan continuing to demand that Armenia amend its constitution to remove references it regarded as implicit claims to Nagorno-Karabakh.

Domestically, the settlement and Pashinyan's push for normalization deepened a confrontation with the Armenian Apostolic Church and the opposition. In June 2025, after Pashinyan called for the resignation of the church leader, Catholicos Garegin II, the authorities said they had foiled a coup plot and arrested two senior archbishops, Bagrat Galstanyan and Mikael Adjapahyan, along with the Russian-Armenian businessman Samvel Karapetyan and other opposition figures, charging them with seeking to overthrow the government. These tensions remained political and did not escalate into organized violence. Throughout the year Armenia continued to move away from Russia and its CSTO alliance and toward closer ties with the European Union, the United States, and regional partners.

Organized Violence in Armenia

Armenia became part of the Soviet Union in the early 1920s after a brief period of independence. It remained under Soviet control until the dissolution of the Soviet Union in 1991. During the 1980s, the Armenian National Movement (ANM) emerged, advocating for the inclusion of the Armenian-populated Nagorno-Karabakh region into Armenia. The ANM gained significant influence and controlled the local government of Soviet Armenia by 1990. In 1991, Levon Ter-Petrossian, a member of the ANM, was elected as the first president of independent Armenia.

During the final years of the Soviet Union, the region of Nagorno-Karabakh, located within the borders of the Soviet Republic of Azerbaijan, became a significant point of conflict. This conflict continued into the post-Soviet period when, in 1992, the Republic of Artsakh declared independence. Armenia provided support to Artsakh, involving itself as a secondary warring party in the conflict with Azerbaijan. Armenian and Artsakh forces held Nagorno-Karabakh and surrounding districts until Azerbaijan recovered much of the territory in a war in 2020 and retook the remainder in a one-day offensive in September 2023, after which almost the entire ethnic Armenian population fled to Armenia and the Republic of Artsakh was dissolved on 1 January 2024. The two states subsequently moved toward a settlement, agreeing and initialing the text of a peace treaty in Washington in August 2025, though it remained unsigned at the end of that year.

Additionally, Armenian forces have been involved in international military engagements, including supporting the Government of Iraq in its intrastate conflict that began in 2004.