Armenia PM criticises Russia over missing weapons, as rift with Moscow grows wider

YEREVAN - Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan said on Nov 24 that Russia had failed to deliver weapons Yerevan had already paid for and accused Russia’s media of destabilising his country’s political situation.

The remarks highlighted Armenia’s growing rift with its powerful ally after Russian peacekeepers failed to prevent

Azerbaijan’s offensive to retake its Armenian-controlled separatist enclave

of Nagorno-Karabakh.

“There is a problem related to the delivery of (Russian) weaponry and equipment for which we have already paid,” Mr Pashinyan said in televised remarks.

“Discussions are currently under way on the mechanisms to resolve this problem.”

“We know that the Russian Federation itself needs weapons,” he said, in an apparent reference to

Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.

He also said there were “certain problems” with respecting a bilateral agreement “stipulating that no efforts should be made to interfere in internal affairs or destabilise the domestic political situation in the country” by the two countries’ broadcast media.

Mr Pashinyan said Yerevan had invited Moscow to hold consultations “so that we can resolve this issue in a friendly and normal atmosphere”.

CSTO ‘provides nothing’

Armenia is part of the Moscow-led Collective Security Treaty Organisation (CSTO) which obliges Russia to defend Armenia in the event of a foreign invasion.

Mr Pashinyan has accused the CSTO of failing to fulfil that obligation, including when Armenia said its neighbour and arch-foe Azerbaijan had seized small pockets of its territory over the past three years.

On Nov 23, Armenia refused to participate in a CSTO summit in Belarus, the latest expression of Yerevan’s growing discontent.

“The actions of the CSTO do not align with the interests of Armenia,” Mr Pashinyan said on Nov 24.

He added that Armenians were “questioning why we remain in an organisation that provides nothing and... on the contrary, creates additional problems for our security”.

In later comments during a marathon TV interview, he struck a more conciliatory tone, saying that Yerevan would do “everything to ensure that our relations with Russia are built on mutual respect, the logic of respecting each other’s sovereignty and independence”.

In a lightning military operation in September,

Azerbaijan reclaimed its breakaway region of Karabakh from Armenian separatist forces

which had controlled the mountainous territory for three decades. AFP