A meeting was held in the Armenian city of Dilijan between Hikmet Hajiyev, Assistant to the President of Azerbaijan, and Armen Grigoryan, Secretary of the Security Council of Armenia. This is a very important event, confirming that relations between Baku and Yerevan are beginning to steadily rise from the level of NGOs, bloggers and journalists to the level of officials.

At the end of last year and the beginning of this year, the deputy prime ministers of the two countries exchanged visits as part of discussions on delimitation issues. In November, Mher Grigoryan attended a meeting of the commissions in Gabala, and in April, Shahin Mustafayev visited Armenia, where he participated in discussions on delimitation in the city of Aghveran.

It should be noted that this is not the first time that Azerbaijani and Armenian officials have met. Suffice it to mention the repeated meetings of President Ilham Aliyev with Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan, the talks between speakers Sahiba Gafarova and Alain Simonyan, Foreign Ministers Jeyhun Bayramov and Ararat Mirzoyan. These meetings have already become a common practice. The leaders of Azerbaijan and Armenia can just chat, meeting at some international forum, and it no longer attracts as much attention as before. Relations between the two neighbors are returning to normal. Everything happens correctly and strictly in its own time. Step by step, along the route drawn in Baku, taking into account the interests of the entire region, including Armenia.

Hikmet Hajiyev and Armen Grigoryan have also met several times before. But these meetings were held on third-party platforms. The visit of the Assistant to the President of Azerbaijan to Armenia indicates a new stage in the implementation of the peace agenda. It is especially symbolic that the visit took place on the day when the Central Election Commission of Armenia announced the final results of the parliamentary elections. These results have created an opportunity to move on. Nikol Pashinyan's party has not just won, it has gained a constitutional majority and will now be able to freely resolve issues of crucial importance to Armenia, without getting involved in discussions with the opposition and building relations with Azerbaijan, without asking the revanchists.

According to the CEC of the Republic of Armenia, the Civil Contract party received 61 mandates plus 3 mandates from representatives of national minorities, including the Russian community, Strong Armenia received 28 mandates plus 1 mandate from a representative of the national minority, and the Armenia bloc received 12 mandates. Thus, the ruling party received not only the right to form a government alone, but also 3/5 of the votes to adopt constitutional laws, however. The number of votes cast does not allow for single-handedly amending the Constitution (2/3 votes are required), but I think this issue will find its solution sooner or later.

Pashinyan is accused of falsifications in collusion with the West, but everything suggests that the Armenians really did not give their votes to the revanchists, although they poured out a nightingale and scattered promises. After listening to these "trills", Armenian voters reasonably reasoned that all this would end not with the strengthening and domination of their country, not with the "return" of foreign territories, not with the restoration of a separatist entity, but with a new war and farewell to statehood. The opposition insisted on its victory and achieved a recount of votes in a number of polling stations, but only complicated its affairs. The party of billionaire Gagik Tsarukyan made the most noise. After the recount of votes at her request, Prosperous Armenia did not add votes, but, on the contrary, lost votes and remained outside the parliament. In social networks, Tsarukyan is being mocked: he would have sat quietly, but he himself called famously.

So it is possible that in the case of a recount at all polling stations, it will turn out, as Pashinyan said, that the "Civil Contract" won not 49.8, but 90 percent of the votes. 

The prospects of the region are quite clear. Baku and Yerevan will definitely continue to implement the peace agenda. Without interference and machinations on the part of officials representing the opposition, without slowing down important decisions in Parliament. It is very important to prevent attempts to put the brakes on the process. The opposition has increased its popularity thanks to generous funding, but not enough to get the right to put a stick in the wheels of the peace agenda. The peace agenda is the main goal and the main threat to traditional nationalist foundations. They had already begun to weaken, and the new parliament had to stop this process and prevent this ugly structure from being destroyed.

Now that the situation in Armenia has finally cleared up and the risks associated with increasing the capabilities of the revanchist forces have been eliminated to a certain extent, we can continue the path we started with greater confidence that what was built will not be destroyed.

Armen Grigoryan's return visit to Azerbaijan is next in line. And the way the Armenian media write about it attracts attention. Calmly and even with some enthusiasm. Although two weeks ago, the same media outlets were spreading news about relations with Azerbaijan with an obligatory touch of negativity and cynicism. There is less and less news about Kocharyan's "revolution" or Karapetyan's "popular uprising."

In general, a lot has really changed in the years since the Second Karabakh War. Baku's efforts were not in vain. It was not easy to clean out the Augean stables of nationalist ideology. It took a lot of work before understanding began to come. 

I remembered how in September 2022, the head of the National Security Service, Armen Grigoryan, went to Khankendi to celebrate the "independence of Artsakh." The Azerbaijani Foreign Ministry reacted very harshly to this behavior of the Armenian official. According to Armenian media, Grigoryan was so shocked by Baku's reaction that he hurried to apologize to the Azerbaijani side through closed channels. He assured me that he had just gone to visit his relatives and his father's grave, as he was from Karabakh. After the scandal, the Prime Minister sent the head of the National Security Service on vacation. A month later, a document was signed in Prague in which Armenia recognized the territorial integrity of Azerbaijan for the first time without any reservations in accordance with the Alma Ata Declaration.

What will happen next? If the peace process between Azerbaijan and Armenia is allowed to move along the already established path, the process will develop in a positive way. Pressure on Baku is impossible. Yerevan is the weaker side here, but thanks to the victory of the ruling party in the elections, it has gained more confidence in its ability to withstand interference and pressure from outside. Nikol Pashinyan has consolidated his position, and in the next five years, if there are no force majeure situations, significant further changes can be expected.

To be fair, we note that there are no active attempts to interfere in the bilateral dialogue between Baku and Yerevan. The military victory of Azerbaijan has seriously changed the approaches of the main players to the region. The President of the country has clearly outlined its red lines. Baku's relations with Yerevan are also a red line of Azerbaijan, which no one should cross. President Ilham Aliyev ousted from this process all those who were crowding on the side of Armenia, using tools that, to the surprise of many, turned out to be at the disposal of Baku. And the US's guardianship of the peace agenda has given Yerevan confidence. After August 8, the process went faster, and the atmosphere around bilateral relations began to change before our very eyes.

Now it's time to implement important ideas. In particular, the Armenian section of the Zangezur corridor, the TRIPP project.

At the end of May, US Secretary of State Marco Rubio paid a brief visit to Armenia for about an hour. Right at Zvartnots airport, he and Armenian Foreign Minister Ararat Mirzoyan signed the charter on comprehensive strategic partnership between the two countries. In addition, framework agreements were signed, including on cooperation in the creation of the "Trump Route for International Peace and Prosperity."

The US Secretary of State called the TRIPP project the anchor of the peace agreement between Armenia and Azerbaijan. And even more. At a hearing before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, he stated: in fact, it is more than an anchor, and has a revolutionary character.

The Azerbaijani side fully agrees with such definitions. Baku has been talking about the importance of the road for Armenia from the very beginning. It took time for Yerevan to realize that the neighbor was really trying not only for himself. And today Nikol Pashinyan has become an even more inspired and active propagandist of the project.

Decisions and work related to the project were postponed until "after the election." Well, the election is over. Pashinyan received a vote of confidence from his society. From the silent majority, whose voice has not been heard in recent months, when the information environment has been shaken by revanchist propaganda.