Armenia feels abandoned by the Kremlin and is trying to find new partners to help ensure its security. But its dependence on the Kremlin is deep – and archrival Azerbaijan is already mulling its next attack.
This week, a joint military exercise of Armenian and American soldiers began not far from Armenia’s capital city of Yerevan. The maneuver is actually much smaller than the headlines made it out to be a few days ago. According to a press release from the United States forces in Europe, only 85 American soldiers and 175 Armenian soldiers were to train with each other for nine days for international peacekeeping missions.
Contrary to what some media outlets claimed, this is not the first joint military exercise the Caucasus republic has conducted with soldiers from the U.S. In the past, Armenia has sent peacekeepers to Afghanistan, Kosovo and Iraq, participated in NATO exercises in neighboring Georgia and also taken part in training with American soldiers.
This time around, though, the maneuver attracted attention because of the delicate political context: Despite being a member of Moscow’s military pact, the Collective Security Treaty Organization (CSTO), Armenia has not allowed any Russian-led military exercises on its territory this year. Meanwhile, Yerevan had apparently been planning this exercise with Moscow’s arch-enemy for quite some time.
Yerevan had reasons for the affront. Armenia feels betrayed by Russia, which has traditionally been its protective power. For two and a half years, the Kremlin has stood idly by as its neighbor Azerbaijan shelled and occupied Armenian territory. Yerevan also feels it has been left in the lurch in Nagorno-Karabakh, the Armenian enclave that has not been recognized by the international community. The 2,000-strong Russian peacekeeping force that is supposed to oversee the 2020 cease-fire brokered by Putin is apparently unable or unwilling to stand in the way of Azerbaijani autocrat Ilham Aliyev.
Baku Is Exploiting Moscow’s Restraint
Azerbaijan has taken advantage of Russia’s restraint by blocking the Lachin Corridor, the only road connecting Armenia and Nagorno-Karabakh, for the last nine months. Even aid supplies from the International Committee of the Red Cross have been unable to get through since June, leading to a looming hunger crisis for the 120,000 inhabitants of the de facto state.
Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan has begun openly venting his anger with Vladimir Putin. He apparently wants to signal to Moscow that his country could seek out other security partners if Russia fails to live up to its duties. At the beginning of the month, Pashinyan even told the Italian newspaper La Repubblica that Russia was withdrawing from the South Caucasus. We could “wake up one day and see Russia is not here,” the Armenian prime minister said in the interview, which he also posted on the government website.
It was only the first of several provocations directed at the Kremlin. For the first time since the beginning of Russia’s war of aggression, Armenia also sent a shipment of humanitarian aid to Ukraine in recent days. At almost the same time, Armenian first lady Anna Hajobjan traveled to Kyiv at the invitation of the Ukrainian president’s wife, Olena Selenska. There, the wife of Prime Minister Pashinyan also met with President Volodymyr Zelenskyy last week.
Russia Summons Ambassador
The photo of the two together seems to have provoked considerable anger in the Kremlin. On Friday, the Russian Foreign Ministry summoned the Armenian ambassador and handed him a note of protest. The Foreign Ministry said in a statement that “the Armenian leadership had in recent days taken a series of unfriendly steps.” Russian state media also noted that Armenia’s parliament may soon ratify the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court (ICC). If it does, then the country would be obliged to arrest its former ally Vladimir Putin. The ICC has issued an arrest warrant against the Russian president for the abduction of Ukrainian children.
Russia has always been the protective power of independent Armenia and its closest and most important military ally. Similar to NATO, the Collective Security Treaty Organization (CSTO) provides a guarantee of assistance to its members. Russia supplies weapons to Yerevan at favorable prices and hastrained Armenian officers. The Kremlin also maintains a military base near Gyumri, Armenia’s second-largest city. The bilateral treaty for the stationing of Russian troops runs until 2044. Since 2010, it has also stipulated that Russian soldiers in Armenia guarantee the security of all the country’s borders, including that with Azerbaijan.
But when Azerbaijani troops advanced several kilometers into Armenia in May 2021, including another major attack in November of the same year, Moscow allowed them to do so. In the meantime, Baku has reportedly occupied 200 square kilometers (77 square miles) of Armenian territory, according to Benyamin Poghosyan of the think tank Applied Policy Research Institute of Armenia (APRI). Poghosyan says Yerevan began to rethink its security in 2021 after Russia’s failure to provide assistance. Since then, efforts have been made to find other weighty security partners in addition to Russia.
One possibility in the immediate vicinity would be Armenia’s neighbor Iran. “However, we are getting very clear signals from the European Union and from the U.S. that any military cooperation with Iran, no matter how small, would severely damage our relations with Western partners,” Poghosyan says. One less controversial partner, he says, might be India, which could be accepted by both Russia and the West as Armenia’s new arms supplier. Officially, nothing is known about the scope of the weapons Yerevan has reportedly ordered from India, Poghosyan says. But Indian media have reported the orders to be worth $500 million. Armenia is also interesting to India because it could provide an alternative trade route to the Suez Canal.
Since its invasion of Ukraine, Russia has reportedly no longer served as a reliable arms supplier. “Today, we see that Russia itself is in need of weapons, arms and ammunition, and in this situation, it’s understandable that even if it wished to, the Russian Federation cannot meet Armenia’s security needs,” Pashinyan said in his interview with La Repubblica. Since the invasion, Moscow has also reportedly withdrawn experienced soldiers and commanders from Armenia and from the peacekeeping force in Nagorno-Karabakh and replaced them with inexperienced recruits. Armenia’s security is simply no longer a priority for the Kremlin.
Moscow Needs Baku and Ankara
There’s been a shift in interests as a result of the war, says Stefan Meister, a Russia expert at the German Council on Foreign Relations. He says that Azerbaijan and Turkey have become even more important partners for Moscow, because Russia needs alternative trade routes, such as the north-south corridor through Azerbaijan, to avoid Western sanctions. Turkey also plays an important role in this. It’s a scenario in which Armenia has become the victim of larger interests.
Armenia’s political estrangement from Putin began with the 2018 democratic revolution that brought Nikol Pashinyan to power. It is well-known that there is no love lost between the autocrat in Moscow and the democracy proponent in Yerevan. Russia’s war put Pashinyan in an even more uncomfortable position. To avoid being completely on the wrong side of history, Yerevan has resorted to a strategic silence, says Richard Giragosian, head of the Regional Studies Center, an independent think tank based in Yerevan. According to Giragosian, Prime Minister Pashinyan’s statements and actions do more than just send a message to Moscow. “The Armenian government is preparing society to turn away from Putin’s Russia,” the analyst says. Giragosian adds that even pro-Russian Armenians no longer automatically side with the Russian leader. He says that the numerous Russian refugees who have come to Armenia since the beginning of the war in Ukraine have also contributed to this shift in thinking.
Still, even if Yerevan would prefer to wriggle out of Russia’s embrace politically, it cannot afford to turn away from Moscow economically or in terms of security policy. “I fear that if Armenia angers the Russian leadership, it will have a negative impact,” says Armenia expert Poghosyan. He argues that no Western power will be willing to provide Armenia with military support that goes beyond arms deliveries. There will be no “boots on the ground,” Poghosyan says. And as little as Russian soldiers have done in Armenia and Nagorno-Karabakh in recent years, it was likely thanks to their presence alone that Azerbaijan didn’t make even greater inroads.
No One Is Prepared To Help
German Russia expert Meister also fears that Pashinyan is taking a “gamble” with his provocations towards Moscow. “He is signaling to us: I’m ready to move away from Moscow,” says Meister. But the analyst also says that the West won’t be prepared to offer much help to either,Armenia, at least not in the form of military assistance. The European Union did send a 100-strong civilian observer mission to the conflict area this year at an astonishing speed. But there is no consensus for an armed EU peacekeeping mission, which would be an absolute revolution. “And Russia will punish Pashinyan at some point if he actually takes steps to break Armenia free from its grip,” Meister believes. It’s not only militarily that Moscow has the greatest leverage. It also continues to control essential infrastructure and industries in Armenia.
Many in Armenia have already buried their hopes for a durable and just peace treaty with Azerbaijan. The mediation efforts being pursued separately by Brussels, Washington and Moscow are currently frozen in place. Instead, Azerbaijan appears to be massing troops again in the border area with Armenia. Experts are unified in their expectation that Baku will strike again soon – at least as hard as it did last September, when more than 100 soldiers were killed on both sides. To keep things from getting worse, Moscow’s military presence still seems to be the best insurance policy.
Source : Spiegel