Chief of Armenia’s National Security Service (NSS) Andranik Simonyan arrived in Azerbaijan on September 19 to attend the 3rd Baku Security Forum held from 19-21 September. The visit is the NSS delegation’s first visit to Azerbaijan.
The NSS announced the visit on its official web page on Friday, without providing any further details. Azerbaijan has held Baku Security Forum since 2023. According to the Azerbaijani Security Service’s official website, today’s forum will focus on “the role of mutual cooperation among security agencies in preventing humanitarian crises during terrorist attacks and armed conflicts, as well as global technogenic disasters and environmental catastrophe.” The Armenian security officials’ participation in a forum in Baku coincided with the dismissal of Edgar Hunanyan, Commander of the Border Troops of the National Security Service of Armenia on Friday. Hunanyan was appointed to the post on July 30, 2024.
The Armenian delegation’s visit marks the second border crossing between Armenian and Azerbaijani officials this month. On 5 September, Mher Grigoryan and Shahin Mustafayev, the heads of the Armenian and Azerbaijani border delimitation committees, made historic reciprocal visits to each other's countries.
The border crossings come after the summit held between Armenian, Azerbaijani and US presidents in Washington on August 8. During the summit Baku and Yerevan signed an initial peace declaration to end the war and agreed to create a so-called TRIPP (Trump route for International Peace and Prosperity) corridor to connect Azerbaijan to its exclave Nakhchivan via Armenia’s southern Syunik region. Following Washington summit, Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev and Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan announced the peace deal had been reached between the two countries that had been at a war for over three decades over Nagorno-Karabakh breakaway region.
