Armenia Signals ‘No Revision’ Of Border Protection Agreement With Russia

YEREVAN — Official Yerevan says no revision of the Armenian-Russian interstate agreement on the status of Russian border guards in Armenia is planned following a decision earlier this month that a checkpoint at the border with Iran will be manned exclusively by Armenian personnel beginning next year.

Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan and Russian President Vladimir Putin on October 8 announced an agreement that will see Russian border guards withdraw from the Armenian-Iranian frontier checkpoint at Agarak on January 1, 2025.

Under the deal, Armenian border guards “will also participate in the protection” of their country’s borders with Iran and Turkey alongside their Russian counterparts. The scale of that participation is not yet clear.

For decades, Armenia’s frontiers with Turkey and Iran have been guarded solely by Russian troops following an interstate agreement reached by the two countries in 1992, shortly after the collapse of the Soviet Union.

Earlier, in May, the Armenian and Russian leaders also agreed that Russian forces would withdraw from Armenia’s border with Azerbaijan, where they were deployed following the 2020 Armenian-Azerbaijani war in Nagorno-Karabakh. At that time, it was stated, though, that they would remain deployed along Armenia’s borders with Iran and Turkey. Additionally, Pashinyan and Putin agreed on the removal of a small number of Russian border guards from Yerevan’s Zvartnots international airport, which took place on July 31.

Article 6 of the 1992 Armenian-Russian agreement, which regulates the presence of Russian border guards at the borders of Armenia, states that “border troops of the Russian Federation oversee the passage of people, vehicles, cargo, goods, and other objects through existing crossing points on Armenia’s borders with Turkey and Iran.”

When asked whether the new deal reached between Yerevan and Moscow effectively overrides this article and whether the agreement would need to be revised in this context, Armenia’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs said in a written reply to RFE/RL’s Armenian Service: “The agreement reached on the participation of the border guard troops of the National Security Service of the Republic of Armenia in the protection of the Armenia-Iran and Armenia-Turkey state borders, and on the service at the border control point of the Armenia-Iran state border being entirely carried out by the border guard troops of the National Security Service of the Republic of Armenia does not envisage a change or revision of the agreement.”