Armenia has lengthy relied on Russian weapons in its bitter dispute with neighbouring Azerbaijan.
Russia’s high diplomat has blamed the struggle in Ukraine for affecting the availability of arms to Armenia, and has expressed concern that Moscow’s longstanding ally would now look to the West for army assist as an alternative.
Talking in Yerevan on the second day of a two-day go to to Armenia, Overseas Minister Sergey Lavrov mentioned that a few of Russia’s weapons contracts with the previous Soviet republic had been delayed or reassigned as a result of pressures created by the struggle in Ukraine.
Armenia has lengthy relied on Russian weapons in its bitter dispute with neighbouring Azerbaijan, towards whom it has fought a sequence of conflicts because the late Nineteen Eighties.
“We’re at the moment in a scenario the place, as has occurred all through historical past, we’re pressured to combat all of Europe,” Lavrov mentioned, in a barbed reference to European assist for Ukraine in response to the Russian invasion.
“Our Armenian associates perceive that in such situations, we can’t fulfil all our obligations on time.”
As Russia has did not ship on weapons contracts paid for by Armenia, Yerevan has more and more turned to international locations like France and India for army provides.
Lavrov mentioned that Russia wouldn’t oppose these rising ties, however mentioned that they raised considerations about its conventional ally’s strategic intentions.
“When an ally turns to a rustic like France, which leads the hostile camp and whose president and ministers communicate overtly with hatred towards Russia, it does increase questions,” he mentioned.
Armenia has strengthened its ties with the West amid current ongoing tensions with Azerbaijan, fallout from the final main eruption of battle and Russia’s position in that.
In September 2023, Azerbaijan launched a military operation to retake Nagorno-Karabakh, a separatist enclave in Azerbaijan with a principally ethnic Armenian inhabitants that had damaged away from Baku with Armenian assist amid the collapse of the Soviet Union.
Armenia accused Russian peacekeepers of failing to guard the greater than 100,000 ethnic Armenians who fled the area, fuelled by a long time of mistrust, wars, mutual hatred and violence, after Azerbaijan’s lightning takeover.
Yerevan additionally suspended its involvement within the Collective Safety Treaty Organisation, a Russian-led safety umbrella of ex-Soviet international locations, final yr, saying it might not take part or fund the alliance.
