Armenia’s involvement in NATO “Noble Partner 2018” multinational military exercises to be held in Georgia from August 1 to 15, regardless of its small number of participants, has mostly political messages to address to NATO partners and, of course, to Russia. According to military expert David Arutyunov, our participation does not have any significance in the military sense, since Armenia has limited military partnership with NATO for many years. “While from a political point of view, this is a continuation of our government’s attempts aimed at forming a new model in relations with the West and Russia”, said David Arutyunov in an interview with Aravot.am. According to him, the peculiarity of this model is to maintain the strategic partnership with Russia but to expand the field of “maneuvering” with the West, which has not been done by the previous Armenian authorities.
In response to the question, whether, according to his opinion, why some Russian experts view Armenia’s participation in NATO exercises as “provocation”. Our interlocutor expressed an opinion that the problem is only within the experts framework: “There are experts who are sensitive to the attempts of post-Soviet states to expand the “maneuvering”. Let us note that we have no official response from Russia regarding our participation, although there is some dissatisfaction in the field of expertise”. According to David Arutyunov, this means that Russia has nothing against Armenia’s attempts to “maneuver”: “These attempts are tactical and do not harm the strategic relations with Russia”.
Luiza SUKIASYAN
