The Pentagon confirmed the information, with a U.S. military spokesperson telling Reuters that 85 U.S. soldiers and 175 Armenians will take part in the ten-day exercise codenamed Eagle Partner 2023. He said the Americans -- including members of the Kansas National Guard which has a 20-year-old training partnership with Armenia -- will be armed with rifles and will not be using heavy weaponry.
According to the Armenian Defense Ministry, the participating troops will practice taking “stabilization actions” during a joint peacekeeping operation in an imaginary conflict zone.
“The purpose of the exercise is to increase the level of interoperability of units participating in international peacekeeping missions … to exchange best practices in command-and-control and tactical communication as well as to increase the readiness of the Armenian [peacekeeping] unit for the planned Operational Capabilities Concept evaluation by NATO,” the ministry added in a statement.
The United States and Armenia are not known to have held a bilateral military exercise in the past. Their upcoming drills were announced amid the South Caucasus nation’s unprecedented tensions with Russia, its traditional ally.
Prime Minister Nikol Pashinian stoked the tensions in a weekend newspaper interview in which he declared that his government is trying to “diversify our security policy” because Armenia’s reliance on Russia for defense and security has proved a “strategic mistake.” Pashinian also suggested that Russia will eventually “leave” Armenia and the South Caucasus in general. Moscow denounced his statements.
Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said later on Wednesday that news of the U.S.-Armenian war games is “causes apprehension, especially in the current situation.”
“Therefore, we will deeply analyze this news and monitor the situation,” Peskov told journalists.
In April this year, Moscow demanded official explanations from Yerevan after the U.S. Department of Defense initially listed Armenia among 26 nations that will participate in U.S.-led drills in Europe. The Pentagon removed Armenia from the list the following day. The Russian Foreign Ministry claimed at the time that the U.S.-led alliance is seeking stronger influence on Russia’s ex-Soviet allies as part of its ongoing “geopolitical confrontation” with Moscow.
Armenia’s relations with Russia and the Russian-led Collective Security Treaty Organization (CSTO) have significantly deteriorated since the 2020 war in Nagorno-Karabakh due to what Yerevan sees as a lack of support from its allies in the conflict with Azerbaijan. Earlier this year, the Armenian government cancelled a CSTO military exercise which it was due to host this fall.