President Donald Trump will convene a peace summit at the White House on Friday with the leaders of Armenia and Azerbaijan that is meant to help end nearly four decades of conflict and reopen key transportation routes while allowing the U.S. to seize on Russia’s declining influence in the region.

The two countries in the South Caucasus region will sign an agreement that will create a major transit corridor that will be named the Trump Route for International Peace and Prosperity, the White House said. That route will connect Azerbaijan and its autonomous Nakhchivan exclave, which are separated by a 32-kilometer-wide (20-mile-wide) patch of Armenian territory. The demand from Azerbaijan had held up peace talks in the past.

The deal between the two former Soviet republics also strikes a geopolitical blow to their former imperial master, Russia. Throughout the nearly four-decade conflict, Moscow played mediator to expand its clout in the strategic South Caucasus region, but its influence waned quickly after it launched the full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022.

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