Azerbaijani Presidential Aide Hajiyev Visits Armenia in Historic First

Hajiyev’s visit is among the highest-level visits by an Azerbaijani official to Armenia since the two countries initialed the peace treaty in Washington in August 2025. The agreement has yet to be signed as Azerbaijan continues to insist that the Armenian constitution first be amended, claiming that it contains territorial claims against Azerbaijan.

Following the initialing of the treaty in August 2025, the two countries have conducted several reciprocal visits involving officials, civil society representatives, and analysts.

The highest-level exchanges before Hajiyev’s trip were the mutual visits by Armenian Deputy Prime Minister Mher Grigoryan and Azerbaijani Deputy Prime Minister Shahin Mustafayev, who each chair their country’s border delimitation commissions.

The first mutual visits came in September 2025, shortly after the Washington summit. This was followed by meetings firstly in Azerbaijan’s Gabala in November 2025 and then in Aghveran, Armenia in April 2026.

Aside from Grigoryan, Andranik Simonyan, the chief of the National Security Service (NSS), visited Azerbaijan in September 2025 and participated in the third iteration of the International Security Forum in Baku.

At that time, the Armenian tabloid media Hraparak cited an unnamed “trusted source” as saying that during his visit to Baku, Simonyan handed the Azerbaijani side a list of 10 Armenian detainees whom they requested to be released “within the framework of the normalization of bilateral relations.”