Russia Warns Of Response To Armenia’s Tilt To West
RFE/RL Armenian Service
Russia will seriously “reconsider” its relationship with Armenia if Yerevan continues drifting away from Moscow and aligning with the West, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov warned at the weekend.
Lavrov rejected Armenian leaders’ intensifying criticism of Russia and said they are re-orienting Armenia towards his country’s enemies who “have never brought any benefit to anyone anywhere in the world.”
“The Armenian leadership decided to rely on extra-regional countries courting Yerevan, promising to help it in all its troubles so long as Armenia breaks relations with Russia and the integration structures created in our common region. The West does not hide this,” he told reporters after attending an international security forum held in the Turkish city of Antalya.
“We cannot prohibit them making any statements or announcements regarding our future ties,” he said when asked to comment on Prime Minister Nikol Pashinian’s threats to pull Armenia out of the Russian-led Collective Security Treaty Organization (CSTO). “If this is the opinion of the Armenian people, then let this be the new policy of the Yerevan authorities.
“It takes political courage to say that since 1991, Armenia has taken an entirely wrong course in relations with Russia. If this is the assessment of the entire Armenian leadership based on the opinion of the people, then this makes it necessary to reconsider much in Russian-Armenian relations. We are waiting for official confirmation of what the final decision [of Yerevan] will be.”
Over the past year Armenian has boycotted high-level meetings, military exercises and other activities of the CSTO in what Pashinian described last month as an effective suspension of Armenia’s membership in the military alliance comprising six ex-Soviet states. On February 28, Pashinian did not rule out Yerevan’s formal exit from the CSTO, saying that the organization is becoming a security threat to his country.
The Armenian premier’s statements followed his visits to Germany and France during which he met with not only the leaders of the two European powers but also U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken and British foreign intelligence chief Richard Moore. A key member of his political team, parliament speaker Alen Simonian, last week criticized Russia’s military presence in Armenia and accused Moscow of inciting Azerbaijan to start the 2020 war in Nagorno-Karabakh.
Lavrov denounced these “blatant lies” and “ungrateful assessments,” arguing that it was Russia that stopped the six-week war with a ceasefire agreement brokered by President Vladimir Putin.
“It could have been stopped much earlier when the Azerbaijanis had not yet taken [the strategic Karabakh town of] Shusha,” he said. “But Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinian, in response to calls from Russian President Vladimir Putin, said then that they will fight to the end.”
Lavrov went on to insist that the CSTO did not ignore Armenia’s appeals for military aid following Azerbaijani military operations launched at the Armenian-Azerbaijani border in 2021 and 2022. He said that in November 2022 Pashinian vetoed at the last minute the CSTO member states’ decision to send a “peacekeeping mission of observers” to the border.
The top Russian diplomat did not specify just how Moscow would react to the Pashinian government’s decision to end Armenia’s political and military alliance with Russia.
Pashinian’s domestic critics fear that the Russians could not only take crippling economic measures against the South Caucasus country but also give then green light for another Azerbaijani attack. They say Pashinian’s radical foreign policy change is reckless because the West is not ready to give Yerevan any security guarantees or provide it with significant military aid.
Simonian dismissed such fears when he spoke to reporters last Thursday. “What else could [the Russians] do?” the speaker said, adding that they have already failed to stop Azerbaijan from recapturing Nagorno-Karabakh and occupying Armenian border areas.
