Russia withdraws its troops from Armenia. Meeting between leaders after months of strained relations

Russian President Vladimir Putin has agreed to withdraw the Russian military and border police from different parts of Armenia at the request of Yerevan, said Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov, quoted by the Russian Interfax agency on Thursday, reports Agerpres.

The announcement comes after the departure of nearly 2,000 members of the Russian peacekeeping forces from the separatist region of Karabakh and its surroundings, conquered by Azerbaijan last September. Their withdrawal ended a years-long military deployment that gave Moscow a strategic military position in the South Caucasus region.

Border guards withdrawn from Yerevan airport

Armenia also asked Russian border guards to leave the country’s main airport in Yerevan starting August 1. Dmitri Peskov said Thursday that Putin and Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinian reached an agreement during a meeting in Moscow on Wednesday regarding a new wave of withdrawals of Russian forces.

“In the fall of 2020, at the request of the Armenian side, our military and border police were deployed in a number of Armenian regions. Pashinian said that today, due to the changed conditions, there is no longer a need for such a presence, so President Putin agreed and the withdrawal of our military and border policemen was agreed upon,” Peskov told Interfax.

The Sputnik Armenia news service quoted a senior Armenian politician from the ruling party as saying that Putin and Pashinian had agreed that Russian forces and border police would withdraw from five Armenian regions. However, Russian border guards will remain at Armenia’s borders with Turkey and Iran at Yerevan’s request, Peskov said, quoted by Interfax.

A friendship that has deteriorated

The announcement comes after a meeting between Putin and Pashinian that took place on Wednesday, on the sidelines of the Eurasian Economic Union summit. Armenia, a traditional Russian ally, has been questioning ties with Moscow for months after a Russian peacekeeping force failed to intervene during an Azerbaijani offensive in Nagorno-Karabakh last year.

The meeting took place five months after Armenia joined the International Criminal Court, which requires the arrest of President Putin if he is on Armenian territory. This is the first visit to Moscow by the Armenian Prime Minister since the beginning of the tensions.

In September 2023, Azerbaijan launched a new blitzkrieg and imposed its control over the entire Karabakh without Russian forces intervening, ending three decades of conflict over control of the enclave. At that time, Armenia strongly denounced the inaction of its Russian ally, considered for a long time the traditional arbiter in the Caucasus, and since then it has approached the West.