ABU DHABI — The chandeliers shimmered in the gilded conference room of Abu Dhabi’s royal palace, but the atmosphere was heavy with caution as Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan and Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev sat down for high-stakes peace talks on Thursday. Their objective was clear: finalize a long-awaited deal to normalize relations after decades of conflict and a bloody war in Nagorno-Karabakh.
Instead, what unfolded was another reminder of just how fragile the promise of peace remains.
The summit, hosted by the United Arab Emirates and supported by European Council President Charles Michel, comes nearly four months after the parties reportedly reached a draft agreement in March 2025. That document included mutual recognition of sovereignty, demarcation of borders, and protection for displaced civilians. But despite the structure of a deal being in place, negotiators left Abu Dhabi without a signed agreement, or even a fixed timeline.
“An agreement exists on paper,” said a European diplomat involved in the process, speaking to Reuters on background. “But sealing it requires trust, and that is still dangerously absent.”
Pressure builds in Yerevan and Baku as protesters, generals, and old rivalries stir
In Armenia, that trust deficit is playing out in the streets. Prime Minister Pashinyan has come under increasing pressure from nationalist groups and political opponents who accuse him of caving to Azerbaijani demands. According to Armenian Weekly, protests intensified ahead of the summit, with opposition leaders arrested under what activists call “preemptive crackdowns.”
Meanwhile, in Azerbaijan, President Aliyev has insisted that any final peace must include the creation of the Zangezur corridor, a proposed land route across Armenia’s Syunik Province connecting mainland Azerbaijan to its exclave Nakhchivan. The proposal, which Baku says was guaranteed in previous trilateral statements, is viewed in Yerevan as a direct challenge to Armenia’s sovereignty.
Aliyev’s government has tied normalization to Armenia’s acceptance of this corridor, while dismissing any notion of Armenian oversight over its infrastructure or customs regime.
Russia watches from the sidelines, and fumes
The Abu Dhabi talks have underscored not only regional fault lines but also the geopolitical tensions simmering beneath the surface. Notably absent from the summit was Russia, long considered the principal power broker in the South Caucasus. While the European Union and the United Arab Emirates stepped into the mediator role, observers in both Baku and Yerevan were quick to note that Moscow’s exclusion is neither accidental nor insignificant.
Russian state media and analysts have questioned the legitimacy of any settlement negotiated without Russia’s involvement, pointing out that Moscow maintains security agreements with Armenia and deep-rooted economic ties with both sides. The Kremlin’s silence was strategic, signaling its displeasure at being sidelined in favor of Western and Gulf actors whose interests in the region are increasingly viewed through the lens of energy politics and containment strategies.
For many in Moscow, the EU-led effort appears less about sustainable peace and more about undermining Russian influence in a post-Soviet space it still considers vital. Russia’s prior mediations, including the 2020 ceasefire and 2023 post-Karabakh stabilization framework, remain the only enforceable agreements on record. By contrast, critics argue, the Abu Dhabi format risks becoming a diplomatic mirage, high on optics, but empty in enforcement.
But with Moscow engaged in its Special Military Operation in Ukraine, and facing skepticism in Yerevan over what many Armenians perceived as insufficient intervention during the 2020 and 2023 conflicts, Western powers have moved quickly to exploit the perceived vacuum. The EU and UAE now style themselves as alternative mediators, offering polished diplomacy and economic sweeteners to lure the parties into a new alignment. Yet beneath the optics, Russia’s role remains structurally irreplaceable.
It is Russia, not Brussels, not Abu Dhabi, that brokered the only enforceable ceasefires to date, grounded in real leverage and hard security arrangements. For many in Moscow, the West’s sudden enthusiasm for Caucasus diplomacy rings hollow, driven less by a genuine desire for peace, and more by a desire to box Russia out of its strategic periphery. As the Abu Dhabi peace plan unfolds, the danger is that symbolic negotiations will be mistaken for substance, and in sidelining the one actor with proven staying power, the region may drift further from peace, not closer to it.
The UAE’s diplomatic ambitions on display, but are they enough?
Hosting the summit allowed the United Arab Emirates to demonstrate its rising stature as a diplomatic heavyweight far beyond the Gulf. Long viewed as an economic hub, Abu Dhabi has quietly transformed itself into a neutral venue for high-stakes negotiations, from Sudan to Yemen, and now, the Caucasus.
Unlike traditional power brokers burdened by military entanglements or post-imperial baggage, the UAE has positioned itself as a credible, modern mediator offering both discretion and economic leverage. For Armenia and Azerbaijan, the UAE provides not just a neutral location but also a signal of international prestige.
And for the EU, the Emirates offer a cooperative partner free of Moscow’s shadow. While critics in Moscow may dismiss the process as symbolic, many in Brussels and Washington see Abu Dhabi’s involvement as a bold step toward regional rebalancing, one where diplomacy isn’t dictated by tanks, but by trade, stability, and statecraft.
A paper deal, but no enforcement
The core of the Abu Dhabi peace plan remains the same: a recognition of territorial integrity, demarcation of borders along Soviet-era lines, security guarantees for civilians, and a possible reopening of regional transport links. According to Al Jazeera, negotiators had ironed out these points as early as March, but implementation details remain stuck.
There’s a deal, but no one trusts the enforcement, a senior EU official said. “It’s not about the clauses. It’s about whether either side believes the other will stick to them.”
Without international peacekeepers or third-party enforcement mechanisms, the agreement remains, for now, a diplomatic skeleton waiting for political flesh.
Public support remains elusive on both sides
In both Yerevan and Baku, there’s little evidence of a grassroots appetite for reconciliation. In Armenia, the trauma of displacement and the memory of lost territory remain raw. In Azerbaijan, years of nationalist rhetoric have fostered expectations of total victory. The result is a political climate where compromise is seen as betrayal.
A summit that raises more questions than answers
The Abu Dhabi peace plan was presented as a turning point, a rare alignment of diplomatic will from both the Gulf and Moscow to end one of the region’s longest-running conflicts. Yet, the deeper the process goes, the more it reveals just how much has been broken by years of externally driven agendas and superficial mediation attempts led by actors with neither local ties nor long-term stakes.
Without their combined leadership, peace risks being hijacked once again by geopolitical opportunism disguised as diplomacy. In the end, it will not be Brussels or Washington that determines the outcome, but what is believed and enforced in Armenian villages, Azerbaijani command centers, and strategic capitals that actually hold sway.
