YEREVAN — Armenian Defense Minister Suren Papikyan and his visiting Greek counterpart Nikos Dendias agreed to deepen military ties between their countries during talks held in Yerevan on Monday.
In a statement on the talks, the Armenian Defense Ministry said they “outlined a number of new directions” of those ties.
Speaking at a joint press briefing, Papikyan said that they discussed the implementation of a Greek-Armenian agreement on “military-technical cooperation” signed by them in Athens in December.
The Greek minister indicated that a 2024 plan of joint activities by the two militaries mainly includes training and education. “At the same time we plan to introduce a number of successful innovative achievements in the field of defense,” he said.
“Today we are witnessing a very unstable situation as we are dealing with expansionist forces. They ignore international law, international agreements, UN values and principles. The common task of the international community should be to solve all these problems. We must show that we are ready to prevent the escalation of conflicts and also try to return to a peaceful situation. It is always necessary to act in accordance with international law,” Dendias emphasized.
“This year we signed a military cooperation program. In the past, we also managed to record good results. For example, there were many applications from Armenia to study in Greek military schools. Therefore, we plan to accept even more students in the coming years,” Dendias said.
Greece has trained hundreds of Armenian officers at its military academies since the 1990s but is not known to have supplied any heavy weaponry to the South Caucasus country so far.
Dendias revealed on Monday that India and France are also engaged in “trilateral and quadrilateral” defense cooperation with Greece and Armenia.
“We have established successful trilateral defense cooperation between Armenia, Greece and Cyprus. However, there may also be other trilateral or quadrilateral relations with France and India, with significant countries, important powers, and very influential common allies of Armenia and Greece,” said Nikolaos Dendias during the joint press conference held after the meeting with the Armenian colleaugue.
Greece and Armenia have also been exploring closer links in a trilateral format involving Cyprus. Armenian, Cypriot and Greek officials held “defense consultations” in Cyprus last July.
