US military to conduct joint exercise with ex-Soviet republic, being held amidst dispute between Revan and Moscow

Armenia will host joint exercises with US peacekeeping forces next week, the latest sign of the former Soviet republic’s shift away from traditional ally Russia. The report comes a day after Russia rejected Yerevan’s criticism of Russian peacekeepers’ failure to maintain order on the Lachin Corridor, the only road linking Armenia to the breakaway region of Nagorno-Karabakh. The Eagle Partner 2023 exercise, to increase the level of interoperability between Armenian and US forces participating in international peacekeeping missions, will be held September 11-20 at the Tsar Training Center in Armenia, Armenia’s Defense Ministry said in a statement. The exercise involves stabilization operations between conflicting sides during peacekeeping missions.

The maneuvers will be held amid a dispute between Yerevan and Moscow over the role of the 2,000-strong Russian peacekeeping force, which has followed a Russian-brokered ceasefire in 2020 that ended the war between Armenia and Azerbaijan for control of Nagorno-Karabakh. After patrolling the Lachin Corridor. Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan said Moscow was “unable or unwilling” to control the Lachin Corridor, which Yerevan says is under an Azerbaijani blockade, which has cut off access to food to cities with Armenian populations .

Marking a major foreign policy shift, Pashinyan has also said that Yerevan’s long-standing reliance on Russia to guarantee the country’s security was a “strategic mistake”. His wife was in Kiev on Wednesday to attend a meeting of first ladies and gentlemen and deliver humanitarian aid for the first time since Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. Russia has a permanent military base in Armenia that is part of the Moscow-led Collective Security Treaty Organization.