Sensing hesitancy from the Russian-led CSTO, Yerevan accepts the EU’s offer of a full-scale border monitoring mission.
“The appearance of the EU representatives in the border regions of Armenia […] can only bring geopolitical confrontation to the region and exacerbate existing contradictions,” the Russian Foreign Ministry warned sternly in a statement following the European Union’s decision in January to deploy a 100-strong mission to monitor Armenia’s volatile border with Azerbaijan.
Russia, which has supplied arms to both the Armenian and Azerbaijani armies, deployed a peacekeeping force after brokering a cease-fire to end hostilities in 2020 after Azerbaijan recaptured much of the territory taken by Armenian-backed forces in the first Nagorno-Karabakh war in the early 1990s.
“The EU’s attempts to gain a foothold in Armenia at any cost and to squeeze Russia’s mediation efforts could damage the fundamental interests of Armenians and Azerbaijanis in their aspirations for a return to peaceful development in the region,” the Foreign Ministry statement continued in a sign that Armenia’s perceived flirtation with the West continues to irk Moscow while the EU and United States attempt to normalize Armenia-Azerbaijan relations and facilitate a peace treaty.
Moscow First, Brussels Second
Until recently, the relationship between Yerevan and Moscow had run on predictable lines since the collapse of the Soviet Union – even after Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan rose to power on the back of the unprecedented but still arguably misunderstood 2018 “Velvet Revolution.” Though many saw those events, when Pashinyan’s opposition forces peacefully ousted the old guard from power, in much the same way as the so-called colored revolutions that occurred in the post-Soviet space in the 2000s, Pashinyan was careful to maintain the same careful line between East and West as his predecessors.
Though Yerevan has always sought closer ties with the EU, including under former President Serzh Sargsyan – the man Pashinyan replaced – Russia’s importance, especially in the economic, defense, and security spheres, had always taken precedence. Besides, Armenia’s membership of the Russia-led Collective Security Treaty Organization (CSTO), as well as its hosting of a Russian military base in the country’s second largest city of Gyumri, constrained its ability to fully align with the EU.
The country’s borders with Iran and Turkey also continue to be patrolled by the border guard service of Russia’s main security agency, the FSB.
Nevertheless, that situation started to noticeably change after Armenia’s defeat in the 2020 war with Azerbaijan and deteriorated even further during the September 2022 clashes that also saw Azerbaijani forces move several kilometers into sovereign Armenian territory. The CSTO failed to come to Armenia’s support, and Yerevan started to seek guarantees for its security elsewhere. With Russia preoccupied in Ukraine, the EU accelerated its facilitation of peace talks between Pashinyan and Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliev through a series of meetings in Brussels.
And on 6 October last year, so, too, did France. In a clear snub to the Russian-led military alliance, the decision to send EU monitors for a limited, two-month deployment was announced at the European Political Summit that French President Emmanuel Macron had convened in Prague. The 40 members of what was officially called the EU Monitoring Capacity in Armenia (EUMCAP), made up of seconded staff from the European Union Monitoring Mission in Georgia, patrolled Armenia’s borderwith Azerbaijan until 19 December. Given that the monitors only operated within Armenia’s borders, Baku did not object, despite some concerns.
Supporters also touted EUMCAP as a necessary mechanism to create a more amenable environment for the possible signing of an EU-facilitated peace treaty between Yerevan and Baku by the end of last year as well as to aid in the difficult task of border delimitation and demarcation to the satisfaction of the warring sides. Indeed, tensions were reduced, and no major incidents were recorded (even though EUMCAP would likely not do anything other than report them privately back to Brussels if they did).
But even before EUMCAP’s planned December end date, both Armenia and France made it clear that they not only wanted the mission to continue but that they also wanted it enlarged. Thus, in February 2023, the two-year European Union Mission in Armenia (EUMA) was deployed, a month after winning approval from the European Council. With a total staff of 100, 50 monitors now patrol Armenia’s border with Azerbaijan, leading to some consternation from the Armenian opposition who believe that Pashinyan chose an unarmed civilian mission over a possibly military, CSTO alternative.
Moreover, critics charge, expectations from many Armenians may already be set too high. Though EUMA can indeed contribute to increased security on the border and reduce the risk of incidents, it cannot prevent them. Instead, EUMA’s main task will be to report back to Brussels and not, as many Armenians hope, to publicly ascribe blame to Azerbaijan for any cross-border incidents or cease-fire violations, much less respond to them.
Will Russia Reconsider Its Role?
This became most evident in a late-March interview with EUMA Head of Mission Markus Ritter. “We cannot interfere, we only have binoculars and cameras at our disposal,” he told Deutsche Welle. “Many Armenians believe there’ll be a spring offensive by Azerbaijan. If this doesn’t happen, our mission is already a success.”
The comments appear to have been taken out of context by both Armenian and Azerbaijani media, with some Armenians believing that Ritter had confirmed fears of a new war with Azerbaijan while Baku considered them a breach of the neutrality that such a mission is expected to display in order to fulfill its task. Officials from Azerbaijan also alleged that Yerevan saw the mission as a way to delay rather than contribute to the signing of a peace treaty.
Most of all, EUMA’s presence continues to perturb Moscow.
Shortly before the mission won approval, the “civilian operations commander” for the EU external action service, Stefano Tomat, issued a statement on 17 January that raised more questions in Russia. Tomat not only commemorated the 20th anniversary of EU civilian monitoring missions, but also discussed future prospects, raising Russian concerns about Armenia’s possible shift toward the West.
“New missions on our Eastern flank are already under consideration,” Tomat wrote, in what many believe was a veiled reference to Armenia. “We can also expect that EU civilian missions will increase cooperation with their military counterparts in EU military missions and Operations …”
Civilian operations within the EU’s Common Security and Defense Policy “will be primed to continue to serve the EU’s foreign policy objectives and the security of its citizens in more turbulent times,” he stated.
Even with those pledges, and Armenia’s decision not to host CSTO military exercises later this year, citing its inaction in the long-running conflict with Azerbaijan, Pashinyan still received CSTO Secretary General Imangali Tasmagambetov in Yerevan on 17 March.
Days earlier, Pashinyan indicated that serious issues needed addressing. “It’s not Armenia leaving the CSTO,” he said in a televised press conference. “It’s the CSTO leaving Armenia […] and we are worried about this.”
It is possible that the statement was made in an effort to elicit a condemnation from the CSTO of Azerbaijan’s recent actions in exchange for Armenia’s renewed allegiance to the Russia-led alliance. (Azerbaijan joined the organization a year after its founding in 1992 but withdrew in 1999.) However, the statement further strained the increasingly problematic relations between Yerevan and Moscow. Russian Foreign Ministry spokesperson Maria Zakharova criticized Pashinyan’s remarks, sarcastically calling them “incredible acrobatics.”
It appears that Russia will not remain passive while the EU, and the United States in its parallel but supportive track, persist in efforts to broker a peace agreement between Armenia and Azerbaijan. The opposition in Armenia and some Armenian analysts, however, believe such an agreement would set the scene for the withdrawal of Russian peacekeepers from Karabakh by the end of 2025 (something that Baku also appears keen to achieve through a relevant mechanism included in the 2020 ceasefire agreement).
Rather than contribute to resolution of the conflict, they argue, increased geopolitical rivalry in the region could lead to unpredictable consequences such as a new war but this time within the territory of both Armenia and Azerbaijan, the depopulation of Karabakh, or even a larger regional conflict involving Russia, Iran, Turkey, and the West even if only by proxy.
“Armenia should not think that EUMA is sent by the EU to freeze the conflict and to provide it with time to strengthen its military while acting as a buffer against a potential Azerbaijani attack,” Yerevan-based regional analyst Benyamin Poghosyan said in an interview with the author in February. He explained that Yerevan should also refrain from public criticism of Russia’s peacekeeping force in Karabakh as well as its general presence in the region.
In an attempt to reach a compromise, at the end of March, Armenian Foreign Minister Ararat Mirzoyan met his Russian counterpart Sergei Lavrov, and they proposed holding a trilateral meeting with Azerbaijani Foreign Minister Jeyhun Bayramov in the near future, following the postponement of one planned for the end of December.
In addition, Lavrov mentioned that a CSTO mission could be dispatched to Armenia within a few days if the Armenian government were to finally accept this offer, a proposal that Yerevan has still not formally rejected.
“We expect that harmful discussions on the topic of ‘who leaves what’ will end and that all issues of interaction with Yerevan within the CSTO framework, including the deployment of the organization’s monitoring mission in Armenia, will be solved in a constructive and mutually beneficial manner,” Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Mikhail Galuzin told media at the end of March.
Onnik James Krikorian is a journalist from the UK based in the South Caucasus since 1998. He has covered the Armenia-Azerbaijan conflict over Nagorno-Karabakh since 1994.
https://tol.org/client/article/armenia-seeks-security-outside-moscows-orbit.html