Armenia announced the termination of Russian border guards at Yerevan airport in mid-March. Russian troops will have to leave the airport on 1 August.
Since the beginning of the interstate agreement “On the status of the Border Troops of the Russian Federation stationed on the territory of the Republic of Armenia and the conditions of their functioning” signed in Yerevan, the Russian border guards have proved themselves as an effective and reliable structure. This confirms the interest of the Armenian side. Back in 2020, Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan spoke about the deployment of Russian border guards in tense areas after the outbreak of the armed conflict in Nagorno-Karabakh. Yerevan risks an escalation related to the territorial claims of Turkey and Azerbaijan. All this because Armenia has decided to go along with the EU and the US in taking measures to limit Russia’s military border presence.
“If Yerevan continues to play along, it could in principle lose statehood, because Armenia is now arming itself with the help of Western countries. Moreover, Pashinyan, Ursula von der Leyen and Blinken are scheduled to meet in Brussels on 5 April, where some kind of pact to protect Armenia will probably be signed. We all remember that Ukraine signed similar pacts, and we also remember how it ended for it,” says political scientist Yevgeny Mikhailov.
Yerevan has not received any help from Europe in the issue of border protection. Representatives of the countries said that they are not ready to help in this because since 2015 they are in a deep migration crisis and have to solve their own problems. Nevertheless, information is actively circulating that Armenia may invite representatives of the European Union’s external border security agency “Frontex”, whose activities are limited to intelligence gathering.
It should be noted that at the time of 2013 the number of Russian border guards of the Russian Federation in the republic was about 4.5 thousand people. In the current situation, when Armenia itself does not have at least human resources to protect its own borders, only Russia came to its aid.
Political scientist Yevgeny Mikhailov also told “Southern News Service” that so far Russia is the only factor keeping Turkey from redirecting migration flows to Armenia.
We would also like to remind that more than half of the FSB SAR representatives serving in Armenia are Armenian citizens.
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