Yerevan /Mediamax/. The OSCE finalized the closure of the Minsk Process and its related structures at 23:59 on 30 November 2025.

The process has passed in line with the Ministerial Council decision adopted on 1 September 2025, following a joint appeal from Armenia and Azerbaijan to the Finnish Chairpersonship of the OSCE.

“The completion of all necessary administrative procedures marks the conclusion of the closure process. This process implemented the 1 September consensus decision of all 57 OSCE participating States in the wake of the historic Joint Declaration signed in Washington D.C. on 8 August 2025 by Prime Minister of Armenia Nikol Pashinyan and President of Azerbaijan Ilham Aliyev, and witnessed by U.S. President Donald J. Trump,” the news release reads.

Mediamax notes that at the Conference for Security and Cooperation in Europe meeting, in Helsinki on 24 March, 1992, CSCE foreign ministers resolved to hold a peace conference on Nagorny Karabakh - for which another new delegate, from Belarus, suddenly volunteered his capital, Minsk, as a venue.

The conference was eventually canceled because of the escalation in the fighting, so the Minsk Conference became instead the Minsk Group, with the former Italian Deputy Foreign Minister Mario Raffaelli as its first chairman. As a result, the first negotiations were actually held in Rome rather than Minsk, on June 1-5, 1992.

The Minsk Group countries were Armenia, Azerbaijan, U.S., France, Russia, Belarus, Germany, Italy, Turkey, Sweden, Czechoslovakia (later – Finland). 

At the OSCE Budapest Summit in 1994, the institute of OSCE Minsk Group Co-Chairs was established.

The institute of the Co-Chairs as represented by the U.S., France and Russia commenced its activities from February 14, 1997.