YEREVAN, Armenia — Event date: 2026-02-09. Vice President JD Vance’s visit to Armenia broke new diplomatic ground on Monday, making him the first sitting U.S. vice president or president to travel to the country. The White House and Armenian officials used the trip to emphasize both a regional peace process and a broader effort to deepen the U.S. relationship with Yerevan.

Vance met Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan in the Armenian capital and signed an agreement to advance negotiations on civil nuclear cooperation. He also said the United States was prepared to export advanced computer chips and surveillance drones to Armenia and invest in the country’s infrastructure, linking the visit to economic opportunity as much as security policy.

The symbolism of the trip was reinforced by the timing. It came after a White House meeting in August in which Pashinyan and Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev endorsed a framework that still needs a formal peace treaty and parliamentary ratification. Foreign ministers have already initialed the treaty text, but the agreement remains incomplete. Vance presented the process as a future-oriented effort and said peace required leaders willing to move beyond old grievances.

At the center of that process is the proposed transit corridor known as the Trump Route for International Peace and Prosperity. The route would connect Azerbaijan to its Nakhchivan exclave across a narrow strip of Armenian territory, a linkage that has long been one of the hardest issues in the decades-long conflict over Nagorno-Karabakh. The region had been under ethnic Armenian control backed by Armenia since 1994, before a six-week war in 2020 and Azerbaijan’s 2023 offensive changed the balance on the ground.

The war and its aftermath forced nearly all of Karabakh’s Armenian population to flee to Armenia. That refugee flow remains part of the political and emotional backdrop to any peace initiative. Vance’s stop in Yerevan therefore carried a message that the U.S. wants to be seen not only as a broker, but also as a partner willing to support the country’s longer-term development.

Pashinyan thanked President Donald Trump and Vance, saying the visit was historically and symbolically important. He also said he had accepted an invitation to attend the first meeting of Trump’s Board of Peace in Washington on Feb. 19.

The vice president was greeted with a red carpet, an honor guard and Armenian and American flags as he arrived in Yerevan with his wife, Usha. Some demonstrators lined the route, adding a small note of skepticism to an otherwise carefully staged diplomatic visit. But the larger picture was clear: Washington wants progress on the Armenia-Azerbaijan track, and Vance’s trip was meant to signal that the U.S. intends to stay engaged.

For Armenia, the visit offered rare attention from the highest levels of American power. For the Trump administration, it was a chance to present diplomacy, commerce and regional security as part of one message.