News - OSCE Dissolves Minsk Group on Nagorno-Karabakh

The Minsk Group, the primary mediator between Azerbaijan and Armenia in the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict, has officially been dissolved, the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) announced on Monday. Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan and Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev agreed to dissolve the Group after signing a “peace roadmap” joint declaration in Washington DC in the presence of US President Donald Trump on Aug. 8. The Minsk Group’s chair, Finnish Foreign Minister Elina Valtonen, congratulated the countries in a statement posted to the OSCE website, writing: “I would like to once again extend my warmest congratulations to Armenia and Azerbaijan on their historic agreements towards peace and normalization of relations and their resolute decision to start their prompt implementation.” The OSCE Minsk Group was established in 1992 to support a peaceful, negotiated resolution to the conflict over Nagorno-Karabakh. Feridun Sinirlioğlu, the OSCE Secretary General, said that the dissolution is a “historic development that underlines what diplomacy can achieve, even after decades of conflict and mistrust.” “It demonstrates that agreement remains possible when there is a shared determination between parties to find common ground,” Sinirlioğlu added. The decision was reached by consensus of all 57 OSCE participating states, the statement added. The dissolution of the OSCE Minsk Group has been a mainstay of Azerbaijan’s demands in reaching a peace agreement with Armenia. A press release by Azerbaijan’s Foreign Ministry on Monday praised the dissolution as an “important step towards the practical implementation of agreements reached between Azerbaijan and Armenia”, adding that it had “become redundant in the new circumstances.” However, Nagorno-Karabakh Armenians had previously appealed to OSCE participating states to prevent the dissolution of the Minsk Group “until robust guarantees are in place to ensure the safe and dignified return of the displaced Armenian population of Nagorno-Karabakh,” according to OC Media. After Azerbaijan seized back control of the enclave in a lightning offensive in 2023, Armenian officials said that over 100,000 ethnic Armenians had fled across the border, almost the entire official population.