At the European Political Community summit in Copenhagen on Thursday, U.S. President Donald Trump’s confusion between Armenia and Albania became the subject of jokes among world leaders.
Albanian Prime Minister Edi Rama teased French President Emmanuel Macron, saying he owed an apology for not congratulating Albania and Azerbaijan on a “peace deal” that Trump had claimed to broker. Azerbaijan’s President Ilham Aliyev joined in the laughter, while Macron played along, replying, “I am sorry for that.”
Trump has repeatedly confused Armenia and Albania when discussing his supposed role in resolving tensions between Armenia and Azerbaijan. In recent interviews, he claimed to have brought together the leaders of “Azerbaijan and Albania,” and even mispronounced “Azerbaijan” during a joint press conference with British Prime Minister Keir Starmer.
“I resolved wars that were unsolvable. Azerbaijan and Albania, they were going on for many, many years, I had prime ministers and presidents in my office,” he said during an appearance on Fox News last month.
At the American Cornerstone Institute’s Founders’ Dinner last month, Trump again touted his peacemaking record as part of his bid for a Nobel Peace Prize. Among the conflicts he claimed to have resolved, he mentioned a war between “Cambodia and Armenia.” He provided no details about what supposedly set the two countries against each other but assured the audience that the war “was just starting, and it was a bad one.”
In reality, Trump hosted talks between Armenia and Azerbaijan at the White House on Friday, August 8, 2025. Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan and Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev met with Trump to initial a peace agreement, committing to end decades of conflict and expand diplomatic, economic, and energy cooperation with Washington.
A key provision of the deal included a transit corridor through southern Armenia linking Azerbaijan to its exclave Nakhichevan, with development rights assigned to U.S.-backed entities while Armenia retains sovereignty over the land. The agreement, however, remains in the “initialed” stage and requires further ratification and domestic steps before becoming fully binding. Trump has promoted this meeting as a major diplomatic achievement and part of his bid for a Nobel Peace Prize.
However, many of Trump’s broader claims about ending global conflicts—including wars he says he resolved between Serbia and Kosovo, Egypt and Ethiopia, and India and Pakistan—have been dismissed as misleading.
The Armenia-Albania mix-up is not Trump’s first geography blunder. During the 2023 election campaign, he confused Hungary and Turkey, calling Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán “the leader of Turkey” and claiming the country had a “front” with Russia, despite the fact that neither Hungary nor Turkey shares a border with Russia.
