Armenia Reopens Embassy In Syria

YEREVAN — Armenia reopened its embassy in Damascus on Monday one week after evacuating it amid the rebel offensive that toppled Syria’s longtime President Bashar al-Assad.

The Armenian Foreign Ministry said the embassy resumed its activities along with its consular section that “returned to its normal regime.”

“Appointments for citizens of Armenia have already been organized today,” it said in a statement.

The ministry added that the Armenian consulate in Aleppo will also be reopened soon. The consulate was shut down shortly before Syria’s second largest city fell late last month to the rebels dominated by the Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS) Islamist militant group. Both diplomatic missions had functioned throughout the Syrian civil war.

In what was official Yerevan’s first reaction to the regime change in Syria, the Foreign Ministry posted a separate statement on X saying: “We stand firmly by the friendly Syrian people in this decisive moment for their history and support the inclusive and peaceful political transition process, with strong belief that tolerance and national unity are the sole way to stability and peace in Syria and the entire region.”

Much of the work of the Armenian diplomatic missions in Syria is related to the country’s ethnic Armenian community that had an estimated 80,000 members until the outbreak of the civil war in 2011.