Russia has agreed to withdraw its peacekeeping forces and border guards from Armenian territory, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov has said.
The move comes amid steadily mounting political friction between Moscow and Yerevan, Armenia’s capital.
According to Mr. Peskov, Russian President Vladimir Putin and Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan agreed on the withdrawal at a May 8 meeting in Moscow.
“In 2020, at Armenia’s request, our military and border guards were deployed to several Armenian regions,” the spokesman told Russia’s Interfax news agency on May 9.
“But Mr. Pashinyan has said there is no longer a need [for the deployments], so President Putin agreed to withdraw our military and border guards.”
Mr. Peskov said, however, that Russian border guards would remain deployed along Armenia’s borders with Turkey and Iran.
Russia’s Sputnik news agency cited a senior Armenian official who confirmed the two leaders had agreed on Russia’s withdrawal from five regions of Armenia.
It remains unclear when the Russian departures will be carried out.
But Armenia has reportedly asked that Russian border guards vacate their posts at Yerevan’s international airport by the end of July.
The move comes less than a month after Russian peacekeepers began pulling out of Azerbaijan’s Nagorno-Karabakh region after a four-year deployment.
That withdrawal, which involved the departure of some 2,000 troops, was based on an agreement between Moscow and Baku, Azerbaijan’s capital.
“The peacekeepers have accomplished their mission,” Viktor Bondarev, deputy head of Russia’s parliamentary security committee, said in mid-April.
Regional Flashpoint
Azerbaijan has long been regarded as Armenia’s archenemy in the ethnically diverse South Caucasus region.Since the Soviet Union fell in the early 1990s, they have fought two major wars—and countless skirmishes—over the flashpoint region of Nagorno-Karabakh.
In 1994, ethnic Armenian separatists, backed by Armenia’s military, wrested control of the region, which is internationally recognized as part of Azerbaijan.
In 2020, the two countries fought a six-week war that left Azerbaijan in control of Nagorno-Karabakh.
That conflict ended with a Moscow-brokered cease-fire deal that allowed Russia to send roughly 2,000 troops to the region.
In September 2023, Azerbaijan launched a 24-hour offensive into Nagorno-Karabakh to disarm ethnic Armenian separatists and bring the region under its full control.
The offensive, which also ended with a Moscow-brokered cease-fire, prompted tens of thousands of the region’s ethnic Armenians to depart for nearby Armenia.
Since then, Mr. Pashinyan has blamed Russia for failing to avert Baku’s offensive, despite Armenia’s longstanding membership in the Collective Security Treaty Organization (CSTO).
A six-nation security alliance led by Moscow, the CSTO also includes Belarus, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, and Tajikistan.
Although Azerbaijan is not a CSTO member, it enjoys close ties with Russia, which has sought to broker a lasting peace between the perennial regional enemies.
Yerevan Shuns Alliance
Following Azerbaijan’s successful offensive, Mr. Pashinyan has publicly questioned the utility of his country’s continued membership in the CSTO.In February, he announced that Armenia had effectively suspended relations with the Moscow-led alliance.
In remarks to the Western press, Mr. Pashinyan asserted that Russia’s failure to avert the offensive had brought Russia to the decision that it needs to “diversify” its “relationships in the security sphere.”
In March, Russia’s foreign ministry voiced its concern over what it called the “ultimatums and occasionally insulting rhetoric emanating from Armenia’s leadership.”
Late last month, Ararat Mirziyan, Armenia’s foreign minister, described the CSTO as “dysfunctional.”
“The CSTO is a military-political bloc that is supposed to defend the borders of its members,” he told al-Jazeera.
“The lack of appropriate response [to Azerbaijan’s offensive] has caused the Armenian public to question its value.”
In a move sure to annoy Moscow, Yerevan went even further last week.
In remarks to the local press, Ani Badalyan, a spokeswoman for Armenia’s foreign ministry, announced that Yerevan would no longer contribute to funding CSTO activities.
“Armenia will refrain from joining the CSTO resolution ... on the 2024 budget, and from participating in financing the organization’s activities as laid out by this resolution,” she said on May 8.
The next day, Mr. Peskov conceded that Russia–Armenia ties remained dogged by “certain problematic issues.”
“But honest interaction between two states with complex relations means we have to meet more often when problems arise,” he said.
Last week, Mr. Pashinyan met Mr. Putin in Moscow, where they both attended a high-level summit of the Eurasian Economic Union (EAEU).
Set up by Russia in 2014, the EAEU is an economic union of five ex-Soviet Eurasian states, including Armenia.
According to Alexey Overchuk, Russia’s acting deputy prime minister, the contentious issue of Armenia’s CSTO membership was not raised at the summit.
“The CSTO is not a topic for the EAEU, which deals strictly with economic matters,” Mr. Overchuk told reporters.
