Membership in the International Criminal Court, supplies of French weapons… Has Armenia turned its back on Moscow?

Armenia is distancing itself. By ratifying the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court (ICC) on Tuesday, the Armenian parliament has further widened the gulf that now separates Yerevan from Moscow. For Russia, Armenia’s accession to the ICC is, in essence, neglect. Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov, who has already condemned Yerevan’s “extremely hostile” decisions, criticized the “wrong” choice.

In March, a court issued an arrest warrant for Vladimir Putin for the “deportation” of Ukrainian children to Russia. According to her, this is a “war crime.” The mandate bars the Russian president from traveling to countries that have ratified the status on pain of arrest there—a resolution that notably prevented him from attending the BRICS summit in Johannesburg in August.

“Putin, who imagined himself to be the guarantor of Armenia’s security, now finds himself in the dock. There is a complete revolution in relations between the two countries, which greatly irritates Russia,” Didier Billion, deputy director of the Institute of International and Strategic Relations (Iris), analyzes the newspaper Le Parisien. “However, not all relationships will be severed,” he foresees. Political and diplomatic relations will not end, even if they deteriorate.”

Several months of tension

This reconfiguration of relations between the two countries is actually the result of several months of tension. Yerevan has openly criticized the inaction of the 2,000 Russian soldiers stationed in Nagorno-Karabakh after the previous conflict, who did not prevent Azerbaijan from imposing a blockade of the Lachin corridor – the only road connecting the enclave with Armenia – last December.

Following the September 20 disaster, Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan also criticized the “ineffectiveness” of the “external security systems” in which his country participates.. A thinly veiled allusion to the Collective Security Treaty Organization (CSTO), a military alliance led by Russia of which Armenia is a part. In January, Yerevan already refused to join the military maneuvers. Even worse, in September it announced the organization of joint exercises with the United States on its territory. “It is obvious that holding such exercises does not stabilize the situation in the region and does not strengthen the atmosphere of mutual trust,” reacted Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov, expressing “concern.”

On the line

After Armenia’s accession to the ICC, the break with Russia seems complete. “The main question now is: who can replace her? “asks Didier Billon, hinting at a possible rapprochement with Iran. “There are already quite close relations between the two countries,” he notes, “and Tehran is particularly skeptical about increasing Turkish-Azerbaijani influence in the region.”

France also positioned itself by giving its “consent” on Tuesday to the supply of military equipment (the nature of which it did not specify) to Armenia, as announced by French Foreign Minister Catherine Colonna, who was heading to Yerevan. But these are just “outlines of a strategic partnership,” nuances Tigran Eghavyan, a researcher at the French Center for Intelligence Research (CF2R) and author of the book “Geopolitics of Armenia” (Bibliomonde).

“At the moment, there is no mechanism that would allow Yerevan to receive a real guarantee of security,” the researcher notes. The situation is all the more “risky” because Moscow still has a “strong potential for concern” towards Armenia, which remains “dependent” on Russia in some sectors, such as energy. “There is no certainty that she will really gain anything by cutting herself off from Moscow while she does not have a real strategic partnership with the West,” says Tigran Egavian. And he added: “Armenia is walking a tightrope: the slightest mistake – its entire existence is in jeopardy.”