Prime Minister Nikol Pashinian pledged to give the United States exclusive rights to the corridor during talks with U.S. President Donald Trump and Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev held at the White House last August. U.S. and Armenian officials subsequently worked out practical modalities of the Trump Route for International Peace and Prosperity (TRIPP) that would run along Armenia’s border with Iran and connect Azerbaijan to its Nakhichevan exclave and Turkey.
U.S. Vice President JD Vance mentioned the establishment of the Tripp+ Enterprise Fund during a visit to Yerevan in February. Britain’s The Guardian daily reported on Tuesday that it will be headed by Konstantin Sokolov, a Russian-born private equity investor from Chicago.
Sokolov is one of 36 private donors who have reportedly contributed to Trump’s White House ballroom project. He has also donated more than $12 million to Republican Party campaigns and political groups during Trump’s second term.
Sokolov has business interests in Armenia, co-owning with another foreign investor one of the country’s three mobile phone operators. Earlier this year, he reportedly showed an interest in buying a major Armenian mining company that was owned by a leading Russian bank, VTB. Last month, VTB completed the company’s sale to an Armenian-registered firm owned by a still unknown entrepreneur.
The Guardian quoted a State Department spokesperson as saying that the $201 million Tripp+ fund is authorized to make loans, equity investments and grants promoting strategic private sector development not only in the South Caucasus but also Central Asia.
A U.S.-Armenian agreement signed last month calls for the creation of a joint venture that will manage for at least 49 years a railway, a road, energy supply lines and other infrastructure to be built along the corridor. The U.S. government will own 74 percent of the TRIPP Development Company (TDC) that will receive “exclusive land use rights, development rights, related permissions, and all other rights” necessary for the transit arrangement.
Iran remains opposed to the TRIPP, fearing that it could lead to U.S. security presence along the Armenian-Iranian border and undermine Armenian control of it. The Iranian ambassador to Armenia indicated on July 8 that the Armenian government has still not addressed Tehran’s “very legitimate and logical” concerns. Pashinian made clear the following day that he remains committed to implementing the TRIPP project “as soon as possible.”