Summits in Yerevan: alarming signals from Armenian politics |
Summits in Yerevan: alarming signals from Armenian politics
The eighth summit of the European Political Community (EPC) and the Armenia–France (EU) summit, which took place on 4‑5 May in Yerevan, coincided with the period of acute geopolitical events. These meetings bore witness to troubling shifts in the policy of Nikol Pashinyan. But what will be the consequences of the Armenian Prime Minister’s decisions?
The price of a ‘policy of peace’
A shift in foreign policy
On the advice of their European partners, Nikol Pashinyan abandoned claims to Karabakh, counting on Western guarantees for reaching peace with Azerbaijan and normalising relations with Turkey. Armenia’s current authorities tend to blame their predecessors for their military failures (pointing to corruption, insufficient arming of the army and weak diplomacy), as well as external allies. In their view, neither Russia nor the CSTO provided Armenia with proper support either during the 44‑day Karabakh war of 2020, or in the following three years, when Azerbaijan periodically carried out aggressive actions against Armenia per se. Against this backdrop, Pashinyan decided to shift the vector of Armenian diplomacy towards the West – the United States and the EU.
Armenian authorities mistakenly believe that Russia supposedly prefers an alliance with Turkey and Azerbaijan, which reduces Armenia’s geopolitical attractiveness and turns the Russian‑Armenian strategic partnership into a formal declaration. Pashinyan justified the shift away from the alliance with Russia to his people by saying that the Russian military bases did not provide the necessary help in difficult times. Moreover, he accused the Russian peacekeepers in Karabakh of effectively ‘handing over’ the historic Armenian province to Azerbaijan and Turkey, calling them allies. In the end, to prevent further military incursions by its eastern neighbour, Pashinyan was forced to invite European observers to Armenia’s border with Azerbaijan.
‘Peace’ with Azerbaijan and Turkey: price and reality
The course towards normalizing relations with Azerbaijan and Turkey, proclaimed as a historic achievement of the ‘revolutionary prime minister’, turned out to be implemented on Baku’s and Ankara’s terms. In October 2022, ironically at the first forum of the European Political Community, Nikol Pashinyan, following the directives of French President Emmanuel Macron, recognised Nagorno‑Karabakh as part of........