Russia is planning to open before the end of this year a consulate in Armenia’s southeastern Syunik province bordering Iran and Azerbaijan, a senior Russian diplomat said on Thursday.
The Russian Foreign Ministry first announced the plans in May 2023 following Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan’s talks with Russian President Vladimir Putin in Moscow. A delegation of Russian officials visited Syunik’s capital Kapan for that purpose the following month.
Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Yevgeny Ivanov told the TASS news agency that Moscow continues “working in this direction” and expects to inaugurate the consulate in Kapan “by the end of the year.”
Russian-Armenian relations have deteriorated further over the past year, with Pashinyan freezing and pledging to eventually end Armenia’s membership in the Russian-led Collective Security Treaty Organization (CSTO). Earlier this year, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said that Pashinyan’s administration is “leading things to the collapse” of bilateral ties.
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Syunik is Armenia’s sole region bordering Iran. Azerbaijani leaders have been demanding that Yerevan open a special corridor connecting Azerbaijan to its Nakhichevan exclave through Syunik. The Armenian side says it can only agree to conventional transport links between the two South Caucasus states.
Iran is also strongly opposed to an extraterritorial corridor for Nakhichevan. It has repeatedly warned Baku against attempting to strip the Islamic Republic of the common border and transport links with Armenia. Tehran opened a consulate in Kapan in late 2022.
During and shortly after the 2020 war in Nagorno-Karabakh, Russia deployed troops to Syunik to help the Armenian military defend the strategic region against possible Azerbaijani attacks. Moscow is now withdrawing Russian soldiers from Syunik as well as other sections of the Armenian-Azerbaijani border at Yerevan’s request. Putin and Pashinyan reached an agreement to that effect at their most recent meeting held at the Kremlin last month.
