Can Pashinyan and Aliyev close the Karabakh issue?

The tangible outcome of the trilateral meeting (Armenia-USA-Azerbaijan) held in Washington on August 8 was the dissolution of the OSCE Minsk Group—an institution established in 1992 with an international mandate to develop solutions for the Karabakh conflict.

The Minsk Group was co-chaired by Russia, the United States, and France. In addition, the group included Belarus, Germany, Italy, Turkey, Finland, and Sweden, as well as Azerbaijan and Armenia.

For decades, Azerbaijan had called for reforms to the Minsk Group, the involvement of the UN Security Council in resolving the Karabakh issue, and other changes. Azerbaijan’s efforts remained unsuccessful until Nikol Pashinyan came to power in Armenia. On September 1, 2025, the OSCE Minsk Group was de facto dissolved.

“On September 1, 2025, the OSCE Ministerial Council decided to close the OSCE Minsk Process and its related structures,” according to a statement from the Foreign Ministry of the Republic of Azerbaijan.

What is important in the statement by the Azerbaijani Foreign Ministry is that it specifically states that the documents adopted within the framework of this format have lost their legal force. This wording proves that the dissolution of the OSCE Minsk Group was necessary for Baku, for example, to abandon its own 2007 decision to recognize the right of the people of Artsakh to self-determination, a right enshrined in the Madrid Principles for resolving the Karabakh conflict.

Today, on September 2—the Day of Independence of the Republic of Artsakh—Pashinyan stated that “Armenia used to exist thanks to other countries and for other countries.” With this statement, Pashinyan revealed the geopolitical essence of what he and Aliyev had done: they had carried out an operation against the Nagorno-Karabakh Republic to neutralize Russia’s influence in the region. (Recall that Aliyev considers the Soviet troops to be occupiers, while Pashinyan believes that the “Karabakh movement was funded by the USSR’s KGB”).

They believe that “Moscow has hung the Karabakh issue over Armenia and Azerbaijan.” However, if Aliyev and Pashinyan are confident in this, they must understand that only the one who hung the issue can cut it down.
As for the dissolution of the OSCE Minsk Group, it only means that when the Karabakh issue returns to the regional agenda, non-regional actors such as the United States and France (and the EU with them) may no longer be part of the negotiations.

Think about it…