Armenia secures EU military aid amid peace deal with Azerbaijan

ARMENIA inches closer to the European Union as its ties with Russia deteriorate. The bloc has decided to open dialogue on visa liberalization with Armenia, the EU said yesterday, in what Yerevan’s foreign minister described as a “milestone” for the traditional Russian ally’s ties with the bloc. The European Council said on its website that the bloc had decided to open visa talks with Yerevan, as well as offering 10 million euros ($10.89 million) in aid to Armenia’s military.

South Caucasian Armenia has, in recent months, rushed to build ties with Western countries amid rapidly souring relations with treaty ally Russia, which Armenian officials have accused of failing to protect it from neighbor and longtime rival Azerbaijan.

Armenian Foreign Minister Ararat Mirzoyan said in a statement: “This is a very important milestone in the deepening partnership between Armenia and the EU, based on shared values and principles.”

Visa liberalization would allow Armenians to make short visits to countries inside the EU’s Schengen Zone – which is free of internal borders – without needing a visa. Several other post-Soviet countries, including Moldova, Ukraine and Armenia’s neighbor Georgia, have been granted such regimes. In its statement, the council said that the visa-free regime would be introduced only once Armenia met certain “benchmarks.” Armenian media have reported that the process could take several years.

Military support for Armenia, which has a diaspora in Europe, particularly in France, comes as Yerevan pursues a peace deal with Azerbaijan. Azerbaijan is preparing to propose the signing of a document with Armenia on the basic principles of a future peace treaty as an interim measure, a senior Azerbaijani official said Sunday.

Both Armenia and Azerbaijan have repeatedly said they want to sign a peace treaty to end the conflict over the Azerbaijani region of Nagorno-Karabakh. Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev said on Saturday that a text of a treaty was 80%-90% ready but repeated that it was impossible to sign it before Armenia amended its constitution to remove an indirect reference to Karabakh independence, which Armenia has rejected. A lightning Azerbaijani offensive retook the territory of Karabakh in September 2023.

In recent months, both countries have sought to make progress on the peace treaty, including the demarcation of borders, with Armenia agreeing to hand over to Azerbaijan four contested border villages. A document on the basic principles could be considered as a temporary measure and form the basis of the bilateral ties and ensure neighborly relations between the two countries, Hikmet Hajiyev, foreign policy adviser to the president, told Reuters. It could be signed by the time Azerbaijan holds the COP29 climate summit in November, Hajiyev added.

In June, Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan said that a peace treaty with Azerbaijan was close to completion but that his country would not accept its demands that it change its constitution. After he made those comments, clashes broke out between police and demonstrators, the latest in a series of protests denouncing his policies, including the handing back of ruined villages to Azerbaijan, and demanding his resignation.

On July 5, Constitution Day in Armenia, Pashinyan said the country needed a new constitution “which the people will consider to be what they created, what they accepted, what is written in it is their idea of the state they created and the relations between people and citizens in that state.”