#armenia-azerbaijan-peace

#armenia-azerbaijan-peace

The handshake between Nikol Pashinyan and Recep Tayyip Erdogan represents a historic moment, as it is the first time an Armenian leader has visited Turkey.

The last pre-war shipments of Middle East oil have yet to reach their destinations, and the second and third-order effects of the crisis - stunted crops and factory blackouts - have yet to hit.

The ceasefire agreement, brokered by the United States and France, formally aimed to end active hostilities between Hezbollah and Israel. In practice, however, the agreement never truly halted the conflict. Israeli forces maintained a presence in Lebanese territory, and military strikes against Lebanon continued on an almost daily basis.

We are on the trigger finger. After 22 years in the movement, we have never been this busy. The American-Israeli effort to bring down the Iranian regime is not likely to succeed without the help of PJAK and other Kurdish armed groups.

Iranian health officials contend the U.S. and Israeli campaign has killed 1,200 people there. Lebanese authorities report 500 deaths in an Israeli assault. And we go next to Lebanon, where NPR's Hadeel Al-Shalchi has been covering this from Beirut.

The White House has deleted a social media post in which the vice-president, JD Vance, referred to the Armenian genocide, prompting anger from members of the Armenian diaspora as well as opposition politicians across the US. The post was made during Vance's two-day trip to Armenia to mark a visit by Vance and his wife, Usha Vance, to a memorial for the up to 1.5 million Armenians killed by Ottoman troops more than a century ago.

Senior Ukrainian and Russian officials are to meet this week in Switzerland for a second round of talks brokered by the Trump administration, days before the fourth anniversary of Moscow's full-scale invasion of Ukraine. The two-day meeting, kicking off on Tuesday, is expected to mirror negotiations held earlier this month in Abu Dhabi, with representatives from Washington, Kyiv and Moscow in attendance. Despite renewed US efforts to revive diplomacy, hopes for any sudden breakthrough remain low, with Russia continuing to press maximalist demands on Ukraine.

Azerbaijan's embassy defended its security personnel in a statement, alleging protesters had violently attempted to enter the protected area and took offensive actions against the Presidential vehicle as Aliyev's motorcade approached the hotel. The Presidential Security Service had no choice but to immediately intervene, the statement said, arguing that any attempt to obstruct a protected vehicle carrying a head of state constitutes a serious security concern. The embassy also said its personnel always operate in strict coordination with the host country.

Zelenskyy told world leaders at the Munich Security Conference on Saturday while he hopes substantive progress will be reached during the trilateral meeting next week, it often feels like the two sides are talking about different things in negotiations. The Americans often return to the topic of concessions, and too often those concessions are discussed only in the context of Ukraine, not Russia, Zelenskyy said.

The Syrian army and the SDF agreed to a four-day ceasefire on Tuesday, after Kurdish fighters relinquished swaths of territory to government forces, which also sent reinforcements to a Kurdish stronghold in the northeast. Government troops have seized expanses of northern and eastern territory in the last two weeks from the SDF in a rapid turn of events that has consolidated President Ahmed al-Sharaa's rule.

Vance was greeted with a red carpet, an honor guard and an official delegation before he was driven to a meeting with Armenia's Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan. Speaking to reporters before the meeting, Vance said, "The prime minister has been a great friend of ours and a real ally in peace and development in this region (of) the world."

It also said it had asked the SDF to provide the name of a candidate for the role of assistant to the defence minister in Damascus, as part of efforts to integrate the Kurds into the Syrian state. The SDF confirmed it had accepted the ceasefire and said it would not engage in any military action unless attacked. We also affirm our openness to political paths, negotiated solutions, and dialogue,

Trump has given both sides until June to reach deal, but future of Donbas industrial heartland remains a sticking point. Russian and Ukrainian envoys are set to engage in a new round of United States-brokered talks next week in Geneva as the war approaches the four-year mark with no apparent compromises on territory in sight. Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov said on Friday that the trilateral talks, which follow two earlier rounds in Abu Dhabi, would be held on February 17-18, according to the RIA Novosti news agency.

Ukraine, Russia, and the United States, after two days of "constructive" peace talks in Abu Dhabi, are set to resume peace negotiations in the United Arab Emirates capital next week, even as the war itself showed no signs of letup. On January 23-24, "the United States coordinated a trilateral meeting alongside Ukraine and Russia, graciously hosted by the United Arab Emirates," White House envoy Steve Witkoff wrote on X.