Senior U.S. official to limit South Caucasus trip to Armenia, analyst says

A senior U.S. official expected to visit Armenia in February has not planned stops in other South Caucasus countries and will limit the trip to Yerevan, Armenian political analyst Suren Sargsyan says.

In a social media post on Thursday, Sargsyan said the visit would be unusual in a regional context, noting that no sitting U.S. president has visited Armenia, Azerbaijan or Georgia except for former President George W. Bush’s trip to Georgia, and that only one U.S. vice president — Mike Pence during Donald Trump’s first term — visited the region, also travelling solely to Georgia.

He added that February would mark an unprecedented moment in U.S. diplomacy in the South Caucasus, as Washington is not expected to have ambassadors in any of the three countries at that time, citing a range of appointment-related reasons.

Sargsyan had said earlier that a senior U.S. official was expected to visit Armenia in February. He said that, to his knowledge, the official had not planned visits to other regional states.