Armenia Says To Ditch Russian Border Guards At Yerevan Airport
Mar 7, 2024
Armenia said Thursday it no longer needed Russian border guards at Yerevan airport, in the latest sign the ex-Soviet republic is straying further from the orbit of its traditional ally.
Russia had been in charge of border control at Yerevan’s Zvartnots airport since a 1992 deal that saw its border guards deployed along Armenia’s border with Turkey and Iran.
At the time, newly independent Armenia did not have its own frontier troops.
“We have informed Russia that there is no longer a necessity of Russian assistance in ensuring border control at the Zvartnots airport,” Foreign Minister Ararat Mirzoyan said.
“Armenia now has all the institutional capacities to ensure border control (at the airport),” he added.
Last month, Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan said Armenia had suspended its participation in the Collective Security Treaty Organisation (CSTO), a Moscow-led security alliance of several ex-Soviet republics.
Relations between the two have remained heated since last year, when Armenia accused Russia of failing to stop Azerbaijan from capturing the breakaway region of Nagorno-Karabakh from Armenian separatists.
The mountainous enclave’s entire Armenian population — more than 100,000 people — fled to Armenia in the aftermath.
Armenia boycotted a CSTO summit at the end of 2023 over what Pashinyan said was the bloc’s failure to fulfil its security obligations.
In a sign of its ambition for new security guarantees, Yerevan has been forging partnerships with Western countries — mainly France and the United States.
Moscow had for decades been the main moderator of the conflict over Karabakh but has been bogged down by its two-year Ukraine offensive.
n February, Armenia formally joined the International Criminal Court (ICC), despite Moscow warning the small Caucasus country against the move.
It is now obliged to arrest Russian President Vladimir Putin if he sets foot on Armenian territory under an ICC arrest warrant issued for the Russian leader in March 2023.
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