On 26 April 1916, in Petrograd, Russian foreign minister Sergey Sazonov and French ambassador Maurice Paléologue conclude the Sazonov–Paléologue Agreement on Western Armenia — Russia’s counterpart to the Anglo-French Sykes–Picot arrangement.

Russia receives sovereignty over the vilayets of Erzurum, Trebizond, Bitlis and Van — about 60,000 square miles, much of it already under Russian occupation in summer 1916 — in return for assent to the Anglo-French partition of Ottoman Asia.

The agreement falls exactly one year after the Treaty of London with Italy (1915) and belongs to the secret Allied series on the Ottoman Empire: Constantinople (1915), Sykes–Picot (May 1916) and Sazonov–Paléologue.

The Russian Revolution of 1917 and the Peace of Brest-Litovsk annulled Tsarist claims. At the Paris Peace Conference, British maps still marked the area ceded to Russia, but without practical effect.

The document is a diplomatic letter, not a solemnly ratified treaty, yet Allies treated it as a binding Petrograd–Paris understanding on Eastern Anatolia.

For Ottoman Armenia and Kurdistan, the agreement shows how the great powers partitioned provinces on the map before the Porte’s defeat.

The Sazonov–Paléologue Agreement of 26 April 1916 remains the secret Franco-Russian commitment on Western Armenia in the First World War.

Image: Petrograd / Anatolia; Wikimedia Commons. Cropped to 16:9.

Source consulted: Sazonov–Paléologue Agreement. Treaty text: Sazonov–Paléologue Agreement (Wikisource).