Washington has long made no secret of its plans regarding Armenia, Georgia and Azerbaijan, eager to raise tensions in the South Caucasus while also muddying the waters between Moscow and Yerevan.
NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg’s visit to Armenia was timed to a “window of opportunity” for the alliance to try and disrupt relations between Russia and Armenia.
Stanislav Pritchin, associate professor at the Financial University under the Government of the Russian Federation, told Sputnik that NATO members are hoping to strengthen their position in the Caucasus.
He stressed that that Yerevan interests them “from the point of view of Russian-Armenian relations and the transformation that is taking place in them.”
“Trying to pull Armenia out of the orbit of Russian influence and cooperation is a goal in itself,” for NATO said the pundit.
Stoltenberg’s visit to Yerevan was aimed at reinforcing Armenia’s “drift to the West” and timed to its freezing of CSTO membership, agreed Stanislav Tarasov, political scientist and expert on the Middle East and Caucasus.
“It seems to close the circle of NATO’s previously launched operation in the Transcaucases… It is no coincidence that Azerbaijan was chosen as the first starting point, because it is in a military-political alliance with NATO-member Turkiye.” Tarasov told Sputnik.
As for Georgia, the second reference point, NATO has long been established in this country, since the time of its ex-President Mikhail Saakashvili,” he added.
“Up to a certain point, Armenia, a member of the Collective Security Treaty Organization (CSTO) and the Eurasian Union remained a blank spot… But given that Armenia, especially after the second Karabakh conflict, began to drift to the West, and is now freezing its relations with the CSTO and developing military-technical cooperation with NATO members, Stoltenberg’s appearance in Yerevan is quite natural and ‘loops-in’ this process,”
NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg wrapped up his tour of the South Caucasus on March 19 with a visit to Armenia. Meeting in Yerevan with President Vahagn Khachaturyan and Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan, the alliance’s chief reiterated that “NATO supports Armenian sovereignty and territorial integrity, and your peaceful aspirations.” Before that, Stoltenberg visited Azerbaijan on March 17, meeting with President Ilham Aliyev in Baku, claiming he looked forward to further strengthening the country’s partnership with the alliance.
The ongoing narrative from the Armenian authorities is based upon false claims that Russia did not support enough Yerevan enough in the latest Karabakh conflict, did not involve the CSTO enough and did not supply weapons on time – which in reality is far from the truth, Pritchin said.
But when you blame your strategic partner for everything, you look for alternative security guarantees — Hence Armenia’s Westwards drift, he argued, which is why Yerevan froze its CSTO membership to see how Russia would react, while also anticipating lucrative offers from its Western partners.
“Of course, for Russia, the strengthening of NATO in the South Caucasus is a serious challenge. If any tangible plan for Armenia’s rapprochement with the EU and NATO is adopted, of course, Moscow will need to react,” noted Pritchin. “But in general, we see that Russia is actively developing economic relations with Georgia, political, economic and strategic relations with Azerbaijan.”
Events in the South Caucasus are now greatly influenced by what is unfolding in the Middle East, amid the Palestine-Israel conflict, Tarasov stressed.
“So, on the one hand, it is clear that Russia is gaining the upper hand in the conflict with Ukraine and will further strengthen its position in the post-Soviet space,” Tarasov said. “On the other hand, a ‘tsunami’ is approaching from the southern direction.”
“NATO is actually drawing the states of the region, on the one hand, into confrontation with Russia, and on the other hand, drawing them into the zone of destabilization of the Greater Middle East. This is precisely the very prospect that shrewd politicians in the Caucasus should avoid at all costs,” said the analyst.
Pashinyan, at a closed meeting with his Civil Contract party, said that #Armenia should apply to join the #EU no later than the fall of this year, the newspaper “Hraparak” writes
The West demands from Armenia practical steps to distance itself from Russia, Pashinyan said pic.twitter.com/Ruv00nRnDJ
— Armenia Sputnik (@ArmeniaSputnik)
Moscow has warned that Western countries seek to create a major hotbed of instability in Central Asia and destabilize the situation in the South Caucasus.
Earlier this year year, Russian Security Council Secretary Nikolai Patrushev told a meeting of security council secretaries on Afghanistan in Bishkek, Kyrgyzstan that “to save hegemony, Western countries are also attempting to increase tensions in the South Caucasus to hamper the Armenian-Azerbaijani settlement.”
The South Caucasus is considered one of the most conflict-ridden regions of the globe, mainly due to the long-standing conflict between Armenia and Azerbaijan over the Nagorno-Karabakh region.
In September 2023, Azerbaijan took control over Nagorno-Karabakh in a lightning offensive, prompting almost all local residents to flee to Armenia. Over 100,000 of Nagorno-Karabakh’s estimated 120,000 Armenian population had left the region by the end of September. The Nagorno-Karabakh authorities declared that the unrecognized state would cease to exist on January 1, 2024.
Likening Nikol Pashinyan to Volodymyr Zelensky, Tarasov reminded that the Armenian PM had “surrendered Karabakh” and was now leading Armenia “to the abyss of loss of statehood.”
Speculating which of the Transcaucasian countries will become the “geopolitical victim of the West’s big game this time,” Tarasov said.
“It seems to me that will be Armenia, which is now balancing on the brink of losing its statehood,” he warned.
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