The signing ceremony in Almaty lasted less than twenty minutes. Pashinyan and Aliyev signed separately, without eye contact, and left through different exits. Diplomats from both delegations used the word "functional" to describe the atmosphere. Not historic. Not hopeful. Functional.
The six articles establish mutual recognition of territorial integrity along Soviet-era borders, commit both parties to releasing remaining prisoners of war — Armenia says 23 of its citizens are still held in Azerbaijani custody; Baku disputes the number — and create a joint border demarcation commission with a 36-month mandate.
That commission is where the treaty's weight-bearing weakness sits. The Soviet-era maps it will work from are incomplete, contradictory in several sections, and take no account of the roads, pipelines, and irrigation systems built across the theoretical boundary during the decades when the distinction barely mattered. In at least three sections, the two countries' cartographic services are working from different source documents. Thirty-six months is an optimistic timeline.
The Zangezur corridor — Azerbaijan's long-standing demand for a transit link through Armenian territory to its Nakhchivan exclave — does not appear in the signed text. Aliyev has not dropped the demand. Pashinyan has ruled out extraterritorial transit rights. That gap has not closed. It has been set aside.
EU foreign policy chief Kaja Kallas, attending as an observer, called the signing "a historic first step that creates the conditions for a durable peace." She did not predict when, or whether, the next steps would follow.
"We have stopped shooting," said a senior Armenian diplomat who was present. "That is not nothing. But stopping shooting is not the same as having peace. We know what comes next will be harder than what came before."