Russia cuts off gas supplies to Armenia after its rapprochement with Washington

By Santiago Vera Garcia

Gazprom Armenia has decided to stop gas supplies from Russia to Armenia amid tensions between the two countries over the lack of Russian support for the Armenian cause in the Nagorno-Karabakh region, which has forced Armenia to move closer to the United States.

Since its independence in the 1990s, the Republic of Armenia has seen the Russian Federation as its major international ally.

As different Armenian governments of different political colors passed, they all agreed on promoting relations with the Kremlin.

This ended in 2020 with Azerbaijan’s invasion of the Nagorno-Karabakh region, a territory controlled by Armenians since the 1995 war.

Russia, which had developed a significant trade relationship with the Azeris and the Turks, decided not to intervene in the conflict.

Armenia lost a large part of Nagorno-Karabakh, and Prime Minister Nikol Pashinian accused Putin of letting go of their hand.

Although he tried to bring positions closer again, Russia has not given him the support he requested.

The situation led Armenia to move closer to Biden’s United States, a natural geopolitical strategy given the bipolarity currently prevailing in the world.

Angered by the Armenians’ “betrayal,” Putin ordered a temporary halt to gas supplies to Armenia on Monday.

According to Gazprom Armenia, the suspension will last only four days to carry out the planned maintenance of a major gas pipeline.

However, Armenian officials warned that there was no planned maintenance and that the surprise cut-off would lead to huge energy deficits.

It should be recalled that Russia is Armenia’s main gas supplier. Last year, it sent 2.6 billion cubic meters to the Armenian country.

The subsidiary of Russian giant Gazprom, Russia’s monopoly supplier of natural gas to Armenia via Georgia, said it was temporarily suspending gas exports as of 8 am local time on Monday, May 1, leaving the country without power.

The official justification was that maintenance work was being carried out on a section of the North Caucasus-Transcaucasia pipeline in Russia’s southern Stavropol region. It would use the reserves to continue supplying gas to consumers in Armenia.

The move away from Armenia is truly an unprecedented change at the political level in the Caucasus.

It should be recalled that Armenia belongs to the defensive alliance Collective Security Treaty Organization (CSTO), the “NATO of Russia and China.”

Armenia reproaches that the CSTO has done nothing to stop Azerbaijan’s advance and has even “refused to condemn Azerbaijan’s actions” and that Russia has not fulfilled its role as a “guarantor of Armenia’s security.”

At the end of November, last 2022, Armenia rebelled against Moscow, accusing the Kremlin of not providing it with assistance, said that Putin’s protection was “no longer worth anything” and that “a rapprochement with NATO was among the possibilities being analyzed.”

This also led, at the time, to Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinian announcing that his country would not host Moscow-led military exercises.

“Armenia does not consider it appropriate to hold CSTO exercises this year. These exercises will not take place,” he stated at a press conference in January this year.

Moreover, since the signing of peace after Armenia lost the war against the Azeris, Russia arranged to leave “peacekeepers” who would guarantee that the rights of Armenians would be respected.

But Pashinian criticized the “absolute passivity” of Russian forces in the face of the blockade imposed by Azerbaijan since December 2022.

Russia was supposed to guarantee access to free passage between Armenia and the Nagorno-Karabakh region.

Still, according to the Armenian government, they have been completely blocked for at least six months, and Putin has done nothing.

Finally, Yerevan also criticized Moscow for not acting as a mediator during the violent clashes on the Armenian-Azerbaijani border last September, when the Armenian government had asked the CSTO for help.

Recall that, in 2020, Armenia and Azerbaijan fought a six-week war for control of the Nagorno-Karabakh region that claimed 6,500 lives.

A tense peace brokered by Russia forced the deployment of Russian peacekeepers.

Nagorno-Karabakh is in Azerbaijan but has been under the control of Armenian forces backed by Yerevan since the end of a separatist war in 1994.

Turkey, Azerbaijan’s main arms supplier, backed Baku in the conflict.

Despite the end of the fighting, tensions persist around their borders.

Meanwhile, the United States is taking the lead in mediating the conflicts between Armenia and Azerbaijan.

This is evidenced by the fact that this week the tripartite meeting between the foreign ministers of Armenia and Azerbaijan began with the mediation of Antony Blinken, the US Secretary of State.

The meeting will discuss the normalization process of relations between Yerevan and Baku, including signing a peace agreement, border delimitation, the situation in the Nagorno-Karabakh region, and the reopening of communication routes, among other issues.

This inclination of Armenia towards the United States was palpable when, in March of this year, the country expressed its desire to accede to the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court, which would imply that it could arrest Vladimir Putin to bring him before a tribunal for war crimes committed by Russian troops in Ukraine in case the Russian leader steps on Armenian territory.

In addition, the Armenian prime minister challenged his Russian ally by speaking at the Democracy Summit hosted by Joe Biden and explicitly thanking the United States for helping Armenia “to stop the latest incursion (by Azerbaijan) through diplomatic engagement.”

With information from La Derecha Diario