Armenia and Russia—It's Complicated | Opinion

Russia and Armenia have been friends for centuries. Armenia, a landlocked country located in a tough geopolitical environment, is highly reliant on the Russians for everything from trade and political backing to military assistance. The two are technically treaty allies and members of the Collective Security Treaty Organization (CSTO), a Russian-led equivalent to the U.S.-dominated North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO). Economically speaking, Russia's share of Armenia's total trade is roughly 26 percent, a significant proportion.

Yet a week of chaos in the Nagorno-Karabakh region, a disputed territory between Armenia and Azerbaijan, has the potential to upset this long-standing bilateral relationship. Armenia, shellacked after an Azerbaijani military assault in the enclave, is left desperate and reeling. And Armenia's political leadership, often deferential to its ally in the Kremlin, is increasingly upset about what it views as nonexistent Russian support in the face of an aggressive neighbor.

Nagorno-Karabakh is perhaps one of the most infamous territorial disputes left over from the breakup of the Soviet Union. While the enclave is surrounded by Azerbaijani territory, it has been administered since the early 1990s by an ethnic Armenian administration backed by Yerevan. Azerbaijan, Armenia, and the Armenian-led separatist government have spent the last three decades engaging in periodic clashes for control of the area; repeated negotiations between Yerevan and Baku over a final-status agreement have amounted to nothing. Azerbaijani forces regained much of the territory it previously lost to the Armenians during a 44-day war in 2020 before agreeing to a Russian-backed ceasefire agreement policed by approximately 1,900 Russian peacekeepers.

The only problem, at least from Armenia's perspective: those Russian peacekeepers didn't do their jobs well, if at all. Despite the 2020 ceasefire, Azerbaijan never gave up on its ambitions of retaking the territory by force. Last December, supporters of Azerbaijan, allegedly backed by the government in Baku, blockaded the Lachin corridor, the only transport route connecting Nagorno-Karabakh with Armenia. Food, medicine, and basic supplies were cut off, leading international human rights groups like Amnesty International to warn about a humanitarian catastrophe. The Azeris accused the Armenians of using the corridor to send military aid into the territory; the Armenians, in turn, accused the Azeris of a false pretense.

It all came to a boil last week. After only a few days of fighting, Azeri forces pushed aside the Russian peacekeepers stationed in the area and compelled the under-equipped Armenian administration in the territory to surrender. The operation was an impressive victory for Baku and an unmitigated disaster for Yerevan, which didn't want to expand the war by sending Armenian troops to bail out their allies. Azerbaijan's President Ilham Aliyev was ecstatic, bragging that his army finally restored its full sovereignty "with an iron fist." Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan, meanwhile, was left wondering where it all went wrong. In his assessment, Russia stabbed Armenia in the back. "The systems of external security in which Armenia is involved are ineffective when it comes to the protection of our security and Armenia's national interest," Pashinyan said during an address to the nation last weekend.

The message was clear: Armenia can no longer trust Russia, its historical ally, to do much of anything. Moscow hit back immediately, saying Pashinyan was trying to absolve himself of responsibility for the disaster there. But the damage was done; Russia-Armenia ties may survive but are unlikely to be the same.

This is hardly the first dust-up between Yerevan and Moscow. The Armenian government has taken small but noticeable steps toward the West recently. Armenia is beginning deliberations to join the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court (ICC). While much of the push is undoubtedly related to bringing war crimes charges against Azerbaijan, the move will cause concern in Moscow as well. Russian President Vladimir Putin, after all, is currently a wanted man, with the ICC issuing a warrant for his arrest last year. Assuming the Armenian parliament ratifies the Rome Statute (still a big assumption to make), Putin wouldn't be able to travel to Armenia again without risking his own arrest.

While Armenia has stayed on the sidelines with respect to the war in Ukraine, Yerevan has made it known that it disapproves of what Russia is doing. "We are not Russia's ally in the war with Ukraine," Pashinyan told CNN in June. "And our feeling from that war, from that conflict, is anxiety because it directly affects all our relationships." The Armenians have sent humanitarian aid to the Ukrainians and Pashinyan's wife traveled to Kyiv this month at the invitation of Ukraine's first lady Olena Zelenska.

Armenian troops also trained with U.S. troops in a small military exercise earlier this month, which prompted the Russian government to summon Armenia's ambassador in Moscow for a dressing down. "The leadership of Armenia has taken a series of unfriendly steps in recent days," the Russian Foreign Ministry said in a statement.

While it's way too early to predict a collapse of Russian-Armenian ties (the prospect of a full rupture is low), you don't need to be a specialist on the South Caucasus region to see that the relationship between these two long-time pals is on thinner, if not thin, ice. Armenia used to view Russia as its external protector, a country that would have its back during emergencies and crises. The last two weeks have forced the Armenian government to reconsider this baseline assumption. Given Russia's ongoing trials and tribulations in Ukraine as well as the Russian military's disinterest or incapacity to fulfill its responsibilities as an ally, you can't blame the Armenians for reassessing.

Daniel R. DePetris is a fellow at Defense Priorities and a syndicated foreign affairs columnist at the Chicago Tribune.

The views expressed in this article are the writer's own.