Armenian PM Nikol Pashinyan declares, “We are not Russia’s ally” in the conflict with Ukraine

In an interview that was released on Sunday, Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan of Armenia emphasized that his nation was not Russia’s friend in the conflict with Ukraine, but that none of the countries was the target of any of their military cooperation initiatives.

Pashinyan expressed his optimism that Azerbaijan, Armenia’s neighbor and longtime competitor, will stick to the terms of a lasting peace agreement, even in light of remarks made by the president of that country about boundary demarcation.
Over the disputed region of Nagorno-Karabakh, Armenia and Azerbaijan have fought two significant wars in the last thirty years. The area has long been acknowledged as being a part of Azerbaijan, and in September, Azeri forces took complete control of it.
In recent months, Pashinyan has said that Armenia could no longer depend on Russia to meet its defense requirements since his nation was unable to get the necessary assistance from Moscow.
Speaking to the Daily Telegraph in Britain, Pashinyan said that he had stated that Moscow could not have Ukraine as an ally from the beginning of Russia’s invasion of that country in February 2022.
“We are not Russia’s ally in the situation involving Ukraine,” I said. And that’s the truth,” Pashinyan said to the newspaper.
“But I want to also tell you that with the US or France or other partners, our security cooperation is not targeted against our other security sector partner.”
Armenia is embracing the idea of partnerships on its security alliances, he added, “by utmost transparently speaking with our partners about their shared agendas”.
Furthermore, he said that, in line with what Russia has condemned as intolerable and Ukraine has confirmed, Armenia has no intention of contemplating joining NATO. “It is not a question we have discussed or are discussing” to join NATO.
He restated that Armenia was debating whether to continue as a member of the Collective Security Treaty Organization, which is governed by Russia.
Regarding the possibility of reaching a long-term peace accord with Azerbaijan, Pashinyan said that “the basic architecture” of an agreement had been achieved the previous year and “it seemed to us that we were very close, finally, to a final text of agreement” at the end of the previous year.
However, President Ilham Aliyev of Azerbaijan, who was easily re-elected last week, sparked concerns when he said in a January interview that his forces would not retreat from border regions. Along with dismissing the use of maps from the Soviet period in negotiations, he claimed that Armenia had received geographical concessions only a century before.