Friday’s high-level negotiations between Armenia, the United States and the European Union will add to the West’s geopolitical rivalry with Russia in the South Caucasus, former President Serzh Sarkisyan said on Thursday.
“Given the confrontation between the West and Russia, such a meeting will definitely increase that confrontation in our region,” Sarkisyan told reporters when asked to comment on Prime Minister Nikol Pashinian’s trilateral meeting in Brussels with European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen and U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken.
“Armenia’s expectation from that meeting should be to ask the EU and the U.S. to really help it reclaim Armenia’s sovereign territory,” he said, adding that Yerevan should also seek Western support for the release of Armenian and Karabakh Armenian prisoners held by Azerbaijan.
The Brussels talks will underline the Armenia government’s efforts to move away from Russia and forge closer ties with the West. Moscow has said they are part of U.S. and EU efforts to break up Armenia’s alliance with Russia. Pashinian and his political team say they have no choice but to “diversify” their foreign policy because of what they call Russia’s failure to honor its security commitments to Armenia.
While acknowledging a lack of Russian support in the conflict with Azerbaijan, Armenian opposition leaders, among them Sarkisyan’s political allies, have denounced Pashinian’s policy change as reckless. They say that the Western powers are not ready to give Yerevan any security guarantees or significant military aid.
Sarkisyan also sought closer cooperation with the U.S. and the EU during his decade-long rule. But he was careful not to compromise Armenia’s close political, military and economic ties with Russia. In 2013, he famously abandoned an “association agreement” with the EU and decided to make Armenia part of the Russian-led Eurasian Economic Union instead.