US helping Armenia cut ties with Russia – official

Washington has praised the “brave steps” taken by the former Soviet republic’s Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan

The United States is working to “create the conditions” for the government of Armenia to wind down its relationship with Russia, James O’Brien, the US Assistant Secretary of State for European and Eurasian Affairs, has revealed.

The statement was made on Wednesday during a Senate Committee on Foreign Relations hearing about the future of Europe.

O’Brien highlighted that the US Department of State has created a joint platform with Yerevan to help reduce its reliance on Russia. Armenia is “almost entirely dependent on Russia for its energy and its economy, and we need to diversify that,” he said, praising the “brave steps” taken by the country’s Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan.

The State Department official said Armenia is a country that the US and EU officials spend “a great deal of time on” as one which he said is trying to “get closer to the United States.”

“Much of the population of Armenia wants to get further from Russia, so we are creating the conditions for that to happen” he claimed.

On June 11, the US and Armenia announced they intended to elevate their bilateral relations to the level of “strategic partnership,” with Washington helping Yerevan with trade, military matters, its judicial system and democracy.

The next day Pashinyan said that Armenia would pull out of the Russia-led Collective Security Treaty Organization (CSTO), noting that the timeline of the withdrawal has yet to be determined.

The landlocked Caucasus country was one of the founding members of the CSTO, and has been a part of the military alliance since 1992. However, relations between Yerevan and the bloc have soured over the past year, with Armenia accusing the CSTO of failing to stop its neighbor Azerbaijan from reclaiming the Nagorno-Karabakh region through military force.

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Russian peacekeepers had been deployed to the region in 2020, after Azerbaijan reclaimed parts of Nagorno-Karabakh in a conflict with the local Armenian militia. The Kremlin insists that Pashinyan himself recognized Baku’s sovereignty over the region and argued that its loss had long been inevitable.

Last month, the European Union announced the adoption of a €10 million ($10.8 million) assistance package for the Armenian military through the so-called European Peace Facility.

Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova slammed these plans as geopolitical calculations by Brussels to spread destructive influence to the Transcaucasus region. She said it was obvious that the so-called peace fund was actually not about peace and stability but rather engaged in provoking conflicts.

Moscow has previously warned of NATO’s desire to get a foothold in the South Caucasus, adding that the bloc’s aspirations would not benefit the region.