“We have taken very serious measures to strengthen Armenia’s defense, and today we have already taken very serious measures,” Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan said during the discussion “Armenia and Peace at the Crossroads of Risks and Opportunities,” addressing the question of why these measures were not acquired earlier.
“Let me give a conditional date: why did we not acquire these measures before October 6, 2020? Did we not want them? Did we not apply? We applied to everyone, but we were told that they refused to sell to us because they were not convinced that we would deploy the weapons within our internationally recognized territory. Moreover, they had doubts that these measures could be used outside our internationally recognized territory.
And in 2022, when we made the announcement in Prague, it was recorded with Azerbaijan that Armenia and Azerbaijan recognize each other’s territorial integrity and sovereignty based on the Alma-Ata Declaration. Not only did we announce this, but we also reshaped our policies according to that logic. Essentially, the international defense weapons market opened up to us because we declared that the Armenian Army would not operate outside its sovereign territory, and we were, de jure, ready to assume such obligations.
What does this mean? It means we declared that the Armenian Army may be used only for defensive purposes and only within its sovereign, own, internationally recognized territory,” Pashinyan said, adding: “Later, it turned out that in many cases there was no need to knock on doors. We were told, ‘We can offer this to you,’ and the entire global defense weapons market opened up to Armenia.”
The second nuance relates to the CSTO, because, according to Pashinyan, CSTO participation was a major obstacle to accessing the international market. In 2022, there was even a situation in which $100 million in payments were made, for which the Armenian side was supposed to receive equipment and weapons, but the deliveries were not carried out.
“These events led us to the conclusion that we needed to change the paradigm, because the formulas by which we recognize the world did not provide us with the necessary vital realities and conditions. That was also the reason—and a legitimate decision—that we froze our CSTO membership,” he said.
