Russian ties to a traditional ally continue to weaken. Putin withdraws troops

Russian President Vladimir Putin agreed on Thursday to withdraw Russian forces and border guards from several parts of Armenia. He did so at the request of Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan’s government there. But Russian troops will remain on Armenia’s borders with Turkey and Iran, the Russian agency Interfax wrote.

“In autumn 2020, at the request of the Armenian side, our military and border guards were sent to a number of Armenian regions. Pashinyan said that today, due to the changed conditions, there is no such need, so President Putin agreed and the withdrawal of our soldiers and border guards was agreed,” Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov was quoted as saying by Reuters.

For many years, Russia was Armenia’s main ally, essentially a guarantor of its security, but in recent years relations between Yerevan and Moscow have been deteriorating.

The first moment was the election of Pashinyan as the head of the South Caucasus country in 2018. At the time, the Russian press compared him to Petro Poroshenko, the president of Ukraine at the time. Their story is similar in some respects, both became leaders of their country after mass protests calling for a democratic and pro-European direction.

From Armenia’s side, relations with Russia cooled after 2020, when Moscow refused to intervene directly in support of ethnic Armenians in Nagorno-Karabakh, a separatist republic on the territory of Azerbaijan.

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In the end, Moscow only intervened by sending 2,000 of its soldiers and border guards to some Armenian regions. Then, when fighting flared up again in 2022, Armenia asked the Russian-led security alliance OSKB for help. She sent a monitoring mission to the border.

In Armenian political circles, voices calling for withdrawal from the OSKB and, conversely, rapprochement with the North Atlantic Alliance grew stronger. At the same time, there were protests against the OSKB in the streets of Yerevan, and anti-Russian slogans were also heard at the demonstrations.

Russia did not help the Karabakh Armenians even last fall, when Azerbaijan conquered Nagorno-Karabakh during a short conflict and achieved its de facto reunification. At that time, the vast majority of ethnic Armenians fled the region.

While Russian relations with Armenia are cooling, the Moscow-Baku bond is growing stronger. At the end of April, the leader of Azerbaijan, Ilham Aliyev, flew to Moscow, and Nagorno-Karabakh was one of the main topics. The meeting took place on the occasion of the 50th anniversary of the construction of the Baikal-Amur highway (BAM), the project of which was led by Heydar Aliyev, the later president of Azerbaijan and the father of the current president.

However, Politico pointed out that although the meeting was only symbolic, the influence of the Azerbaijani leader in the world’s largest country is growing. Even the website of Radio Free Europe (RFE/RL) pointed out that the anniversary of the construction of the highway was the reason for the meeting only in appearance, since the main celebrations of 50 years since the beginning of the construction of the railway are not to be held until July.

According to the website, Azerbaijan benefits from the war in Ukraine. “The Russian invasion of Ukraine more than two years ago set off a chain reaction of geopolitical consequences in the Caucasus, and Azerbaijan, thanks to its natural resources and strategic location, has won almost every case,” RFE/RL wrote in an analysis.

The country by the Caspian Sea benefits from its location on transit routes for the transportation of energy raw materials. The east-west ones are used by European countries and the north-south ones by Russia.

In addition, Russian aggression in Ukraine launched on February 24, 2022 means that Moscow is unable to effectively enforce the ceasefire agreement that it brokered between the Caucasian countries in 2020.

This had a major impact, according to the analysis. “Despite the presence of 2,000 Russian peacekeepers, Azerbaijan has been able to consistently assert its dominance in the territory of Nagorno-Karabakh, where ethnic Armenians live. This eventually led to the Caspian Sea country regaining full control over this territory in September 2023,” he says, noting that Azerbaijan is one of the winners of the war in Ukraine.

The Institute for International Political Studies points out in its article that Baku faced criticism from the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe for the invasion of Nagorno-Karabakh, and Azerbaijan faced the risk of expulsion. There is speculation that the Caucasian state could leave the human rights organization in the future, mirroring the fate of Russia following its invasion of Ukraine.

“This would put Azerbaijan on an even darker path,” the institute writes. “Azerbaijan is likely to end the era of a balanced foreign policy in favor of closer cooperation with Putin’s Russia,” he adds.

Thus, because of Russia’s rapprochement with its arch-enemy, Yerevan is trying to move away from Moscow and get closer to the West.

Where is Armenia headed?

After the war in Nagorno-Karabakh, the streets of Yerevan are restless. Thousands of people are demanding the resignation of Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan. At the same time, he is looking for a solution to a complicated problem: how to free a country dependent on Moscow from its sphere of influence.

In February of this year, Prime Minister Pashinyan stated in an interview that Armenia had frozen its participation in the CSTO. A few days later, he went even further in the parliament and according to the Armenian media platform https://twitter.com/301arm/status/1762902687517901030 stated that the Russian-led military organization poses a threat to Armenia’s national security.

Now it is even getting rid of the Russian military presence on its territory. According to the AP agency, two thousand Russian soldiers have been gradually leaving the country for two weeks.