Russia’s Foreign Intelligence Service (SVR) claimed on Thursday that in doing so Washington is “using methods tested in Ukraine and Moldova.”
“There is a task to give a sustainable anti-Russian direction to the public and political processes in Armenia. To this end, Washington intends to carry out a long-term information and propaganda campaign that, among other things, is aimed at discrediting Yerevan’s prospects for cooperation with Russia, the Eurasian Economic Union, and the Collective Security Treaty Organization (CSTO), and spreading reports about “pressure” on Armenian migrant workers in Russia,” the SVR claimed, as quoted by Russian media.
Relations between Armenia and Russia have been deteriorating since 2022 when Yerevan accused Moscow of failing to honor its commitment to defend Armenia’s borders after a series of cross-border incursions by Azerbaijan.
It was then that Armenia invited a European border-monitoring mission, a move that notably angered Moscow.
The relations between the two formal allies further soured after the September 2023 exodus of the ethnic Armenian population from Nagorno-Karabakh, where a Russian peacekeeping force had been deployed since the end of the 2020 Armenian-Azerbaijani war to protect the local Armenians.
Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinian announced early this year the effective suspension of Armenia’s membership in the CSTO and said its formal exit 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 Yerevan’s Zvartnots international airport 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 frontier checkpoint on January 1, 2025 and that beginning next year Armenian border guards “will also participate in the protection” of their country’s borders with Iran and Turkey 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.