Russia says Armenia's warmer ties with NATO risk destabilising wider region

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Russian President Vladimir Putin meets with Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan in Sochi.

Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova said on Thursday that Armenia's tilt towards NATO was a cause for regret and concern, and said Yerevan's actions risked destabilising the wider South Caucasus region.

At her regular press briefing, Zakharova said that Armenia's closer relations with the U.S.-led alliance caused "not just regret, but also concern for Armenia's future".

She added that Yerevan's shift towards the West risked "destabilising" the South Caucasus, a region in which Russia has traditionally exerted major influence.

Yerevan, traditionally Russia's closest regional ally, has stoked warmer ties with the NATO alliance in recent years as its ties with Moscow have become more strained.

Armenian officials blame Russia for failing to protect it from long-time rival Azerbaijan, which retook the former breakaway region of Nagorno-Karabakh in September 2023.

Zakharova said that U.S.-Armenian military exercises, set to conclude on July 24, were also a cause for alarm, especially after Yerevan froze its participation in the Russian-led Collective Security Treaty Organisation (CSTO) earlier this year.

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Armenia launches military drills with US amid souring ties with Russia

Armenia on Monday launched joint military drills with the United States, a move that reflects its leader’s efforts to forge closer ties with the U.S. and other Western allies as the country’s relations with old ally Russia sour.

The “Eagle Partner” war games are aimed at increasing the interoperability of units participating in international peacekeeping missions, according to Armenia’s Defense Minister Suren Papikyan.

They involve Armenian peacekeeping forces, servicemen of the U.S. Army Europe and Africa, and the Kansas National Guard. It wasn't immediately clear how many troops were taking part.

The exercises were scheduled to last through July 24.

Russia has been Armenia’s main economic partner and ally since the 1991 Soviet collapse. Landlocked Armenia, which used to be part of the Soviet Union, hosts a Russian military base and is part of the Moscow-led security alliance, the Collective Security Treaty Organization.

Armenia’s ties with Russia, however, have grown increasingly strained since Azerbaijan waged a lightning military campaign last year to take the Karabakh region, ending three decades of ethnic Armenian separatist rule there.

Armenian authorities accused Russian peacekeepers who were deployed to Nagorno-Karabakh after a previous round of hostilities in 2020 of failing to stop Azerbaijan’s onslaught. Moscow rejected the accusations, arguing that its troops didn’t have a mandate to intervene.

Russia has engaged in a delicate balancing act, trying to preserve close relations with Armenia while also maintaining warm ties with Azerbaijan and its main ally Turkey, a key economic partner for Moscow amid Western sanctions.

The Kremlin has been angered by Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan’s efforts to deepen Armenia’s ties with the West and distance his country from Moscow-dominated alliances. Russia was particularly vexed by Armenia’s decision to join the International Criminal Court, which last year indicted Russian President Vladimir Putin for alleged war crimes connected to Russia’s war in Ukraine.

As the rift with Russia kept widening, Armenia froze its participation in the Russian-dominated security alliance, canceled its involvement in joint military drills and snubbed the bloc’s summits.

In September 2023, Armenia also held the “Eagle Partner” drills, eliciting dismay in Moscow, where officials called the move “unfriendly.”

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Armenia, Azerbaijan accuse each other of rejecting meeting at UK summit

Armenia and Azerbaijan on Thursday accused each other of blocking a proposed UK-mediated meeting between their leaders, the latest bump in the road on an on-and-off peace process aimed at ending their more than three decade-long conflict.

Both Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan and Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev are in the United Kingdom for a summit of the European Political Community at Blenheim Palace, near Oxford.

Hikmet Hajiyev, foreign policy adviser to President Aliyev, told Reuters that Armenia had rejected a proposal for the two leaders to attend a meeting to be mediated by the British.

He said: "We regard Pashinyan's refusal to meet in London as its intention to retreat from the peace agenda."

Armenia's Foreign Ministry said in a statement shortly afterwards that Yerevan had offered Azerbaijan a bilateral meeting in the UK, but that Baku had declined the invitation. It said that the offer of a meeting still stood.

Pashinyan and Aliyev most recently met in Berlin in February, in a meeting mediated by German Chancellor Olaf Scholz.

Both Armenia and Azerbaijan have repeatedly said they want to sign a peace treaty to end the conflict over the former breakaway Azerbaijani region of Nagorno-Karabakh.

Karabakh's ethnic Armenian inhabitants enjoyed de facto independence from Baku for more than three decades until September 2023, when a lightning Azerbaijani offensive retook the territory and prompted around 100,000 Armenians to flee.

The two sides have since then pursued peace talks aimed at demarcating their 1000 km (625 mile) shared border, which remains closed and heavily militarised.

In May, Armenia returned four deserted Azerbaijani villages it had controlled since the early 1990s to Baku. The fate of several more villages, located in small enclaves of land surrounded by the other side's territory, remains at stake.

Azerbaijan, which has several times the population of its longtime rival, also demands Armenia change its constitution to remove an indirect reference to Karabakh independence as part of the peace process.

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