“We welcome our international partners’ desire and interest to have diplomatic presence in Syunik in order to be able to better familiarize themselves with the situation on the ground,” Deputy Foreign Minister Vahan Kostanian told reporters.
A senior official from the Russian Foreign Minister, Sergei Paltov, announced those plans late last month, saying that Prime Minister Nikol Pashinian discussed and welcomed them during his May 25 meeting with Russian President Vladimir Putin held in Moscow.
Paltov described the planned opening of the Russian consulate as a “very important step” when he visited Syunik’s capital Kapan together with other Russian officials late last week. He said the mission will provide consular services to about a thousand Russian nationals currently based in Syunik.
The bulk of them are soldiers and border guards who were deployed by Moscow during and after the 2020 war in Nagorno-Karabakh. The deployment was aimed at helping the Armenian military defend the strategic region against possible Azerbaijani attacks.
Armenia - Russian Ambassador Sergey Kopyrkin talks to Russian soldiers during a visit to Syunik, June 3, 2021.
“The presence of our diplomats along with our border guards and military personnel in [the Syunik towns of] of Sisian and Goris as well as Russian entities will be an additional insurance net,” the Sputnik news agency quoted Paltov as saying during a meeting with the provincial governor, Robert Ghukasian.
In his words, Russian diplomats could be stationed in Kapan this fall even before the official opening of the consulate.
Syunik is Armenia’s sole region bordering Iran. Azerbaijani leaders have been demanding that Yerevan open a special corridor connecting Azerbaijan to its Nakhichevan exclave through Syunik. The Armenian side says it can only agree to conventional transport links between the two South Caucasus states.
Iran is also strongly opposed to an extraterritorial corridor for Nakhichevan. It has repeatedly warned Baku against attempting to strip the Islamic Republic of the common border and transport links with Armenia. Iranian Foreign Minister Hossein Amir-Abdollahian reiterated that “red line” when he visited Armenia last October to inaugurate the Iranian consulate in Kapan.