“Today, Vice President Vance and Second Lady Usha Vance attended a wreath laying ceremony at the Armenian Genocide memorial to honor the victims of the 1915 Armenian genocide,” read a message posted on his X account in the morning.
Just a few hours later, Vance replaced it with a very different post made by his spokesperson, Taylor Van Kirk. The latter made no reference to the genocide above videos and photos of the couple’s visit to the Tsitsernakaberd memorial in Armenian capital. She wrote only that Vance and his wife “lay flowers at the eternal flame [of the memorial] and sign the guestbook on the final day of their visit to Armenia.”
Vance’s office said afterwards that the vice president’s X post was mistakenly made by staffers not accompanying him on the trip.
Speaking to journalists just before his departure from Yerevan, Vance said he visited the memorial at the request of Armenian officials.
“They asked us to visit this site,” he said. “Obviously, it’s a very terrible thing that happened a little over 100 years ago, I thought that out of a sign of respect both for the victims but also for the Armenian government … and Prime Minister [Nikol] Pashinian, I wanted to go and pay a visit and pay my respects.”
U.S. President Donald Trump declined last April to describe the 1915 mass killings of Armenians as genocide, breaking with his predecessor Joe Biden’s policy and drawing strong condemnation from Armenian-American groups. Trump used instead the Armenian phrase “Meds Yeghern,” or Great Crime, in a statement on the 110th anniversary of the start of the massacres in Ottoman Turkey.
Both houses of the U.S. Congress formally recognized the genocide in 2019 after decades of lobbying by the Armenian community in the United States.