“This mission is growing, unfortunately,” Yury Ushakov said, according to Russian news agencies. “In June, it consisted of 138 people, now there are already about 210 people working there. And it is expected that its number will increase to 600 people. We can, of course, clearly imagine what they do there.”
The EU mission was launched in February 2023 at the request of the Armenian government and with the stated aim of preventing or reducing ceasefire violations along the Armenian-Azerbaijani border. The EU decided late last year to increase the number of its members from 138 to 209.
Neither the 27-nation bloc nor Yerevan has announced plans for a further expansion of the mission. Armenian pro-government politicians have not given such indications either.
Russia has opposed the mission from the outset, saying that it is part of U.S. and European Union efforts to drive it out of the South Caucasus. It has repeatedly accused the EU monitors of spying on Russian troops stationed in Armenia.
RUSSIA -- Kremlin aide Yury Ushakov attends a videoconference meeting at the Kremlin in Moscow, April 9, 2020
The director of Russia's Federal Security Service (FSB), Alexander Bortnikov, repeated that accusation late last week. Bortnikov claimed that the mission’s “intelligence activities against Russia and our partners” could be a prelude to a NATO-led peacekeeping operation designed to give the West a central role in the Armenian-Azerbaijani peace process. An EU foreign policy spokesman dismissed the claim as “nonsense.”
Prime Minister Nikol Pashinian’s government has defended the mission, saying that it has succeeded in easing tensions along the long and volatile border. It requested the deployment after accusing Russia and ex-Soviet allies of refusing to defend Armenia against Azerbaijani attacks in 2022. Russian-Armenian relations have deteriorated further in the last two years.
Pashinian announced early this year the effective suspension of Armenia’s membership in the Collective Security Treaty Organization (CSTO) and said its formal exit from the Russian-led military alliance is only a matter of time. He declared last month that the CSTO poses an existential threat to his country.
Pashinian flew to Moscow on Monday to attend a summit of the Commonwealth of Independent States, a larger and looser grouping of ex-Soviet states. It was announced that Putin will meet with him on the sidelines of the summit on Tuesday.