“We are very encouraged by the decisions that Armenia has decided to take in their foreign policy and defense policy, the shift they have decided to implement,” Javier Colomina, the NATO secretary general’s special representative for the South Caucasus and Central Asia, told the Armenpress news agency in an interview published on Wednesday.
“I know it is a decision that is difficult to implement and will probably take a long time, but, of course, we encourage our partners to get closer to us and that is what Armenia is doing,” Colomina said, adding that Armenian leaders assured him in Yerevan last week that they will continue to “increase the cooperation” with NATO.
The envoy revealed that the two sides are now close to working out a new “individually tailored partnership program” that will flesh out Armenia’s closer partnership with NATO. He gave no details of the action plan, saying only that it will set “quite ambitious goals.”
The Russian Foreign Ministry was unusually quick to comment on Colomina’s remarks that came amid Russia’s unprecedented tensions with Armenia. It warned that closer ties with NATO could only spell more trouble for the South Caucasus nation.
“We have already seen what proximity to NATO leads some countries to: involvement in conflicts, loss of sovereignty and independence, submission to foreign planning in all spheres and, most importantly, the absence of an opportunity to realize their own national interests,” Maria Zakharova, the ministry spokeswoman, told a news briefing in Moscow.
“Armenia should probably … open the map and look at the region, the countries between which it is situated … The West gives promises to everyone, and I just wonder which of them have been fulfilled and where,” she said.
Prime Minister Nikol Pashinian declared in August that his government is trying to “diversify our security policy” because Armenia’s long-standing heavy reliance on Russia has proved a “strategic mistake.” He claimed that Moscow is “unwilling or unable” to defend its South Caucasus ally. Moscow has since repeatedly accused Pashinian of “destroying” Russian-Armenian relations at the behest of the West.
Turkey, one of Armenia’s neighbors mentioned by Zakharova, is a key NATO member state that provided decisive military assistance to Azerbaijan during the 2020 war in Nagorno-Karabakh. NATO did not criticize the Turkish involvement in the six-week war.
Ankara is now fully backing Azerbaijani demands for an extraterritorial corridor to the Nakhichevan exclave and other Armenian concessions. There are lingering fears in Yerevan that Baku will resort to military to try to clinch those concessions.