Russia claims US is pushing Armenia to ‘commit national suicide’

The Russian Foreign Intelligence Service (SVR) claimed on Thursday that Washington is using “methods tested in Ukraine and Moldova.”

“There is a task to give a lasting anti-Russian direction to the public and political processes in Armenia. To this end, Washington plans to carry out a long-term information and propaganda campaign aimed, among other things, at boosting Yerevan’s prospects for cooperation with Russia, the Eurasian Economic Union and the Collective Security Treaty Organization (CSTO). discredit, and spreading messages about “pressure” on Armenian migrant workers in Russia,” the SVR claimed, as quoted by Russian media.

Relations between Armenia and Russia have deteriorated since 2022, when Yerevan accused Moscow of reneging on its promise to defend Armenia’s borders following a series of cross-border incursions by Azerbaijan.

It was then that Armenia invited a European border patrol mission, a move that particularly angered Moscow.

Relations between the two formal allies deteriorated further following the September 2023 exodus of the ethnic Armenian population from Nagorno-Karabakh, where a Russian peacekeeping force had been deployed to protect local Armenians since the end of the 2020 Armenian-Azerbaijani war.

Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinian announced the effective suspension of Armenia’s membership of the CSTO early this year, saying its formal departure from the Russian-led military alliance is only a matter of time. He declared in September that the CSTO poses an existential threat to his country.

Last summer, Russia withdrew its border guards from Zvartnots International Airport in Yerevan, following an agreement between Pashinian and Russian President Vladimir Putin.

Later this year, the two leaders also agreed that Russian border guards will withdraw from the Armenian-Iranian border post on January 1, 2025 and that Armenian border guards will “also participate in the protection” of their country’s borders with Iran and Turkey from next year . alongside their Russian counterparts.

Russian border guards have manned Armenia’s borders with Iran and Turkey under an interstate agreement reached by Yerevan and Moscow in 1992, shortly after the collapse of the Soviet Union. Russia also has a military base in the northwestern Armenian city of Gyumri, under another agreement signed with Armenia in the 1990s.