Pelosi going to Armenia amid renewed clashes with Azerbaijan

Speaker Nancy Pelosi will travel to Armenia this weekend in a show of support for the country, which has been locked in a deadly fight with Azerbaijan.

Pelosi will make the journey accompanied by Rep. Jackie Speier (D-Calif.) after a stop in Berlin for the G-7 Speakers’ Summit. She’s expected to meet with Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan in Yerevan, the capital, as well as other government officials.

It will be the speaker’s latest dramatic foreign trip following her contentious arrival in Taiwan last month. With the midterms approaching — and the possibility that she will lose the gavel if Republicans return to the majority — the belief in Washington is that Pelosi wants to cement her legacy as a champion of human rights, not only in the United States but around the world.

Speier, meanwhile, is one of a handful of Armenian-American lawmakers in Congress.

Armenia and Azerbaijan have been locked in a bloody, decadeslong feud over Nagorno-Karabakh, the territory internationally recognized as part of Azerbaijan but populated with ethnic Armenians. Two years ago, both nations fought their second big war over the contested land, leading to thousands dead and more regional power for Baku.