In a very unquiet south Caucasian landscape, its two main players—Armenia and Azerbaijan—have been entrenched in a historical conflict over the region of Nagorno-Karabakh. Conventional war erupted in 2020, for the second time after 1988, and has been ongoing ever since, despite intermittent ceasefires.
The region tugs at conflicting geopolitical interests of big powers like Russia, Turkey and Western countries. And now the Indian military footprint in the Caucasus is also rising.
The 2020 war, known as the Second Nagorno-Karabakh War, marked the start of a long-standing political and military cooperation between New Delhi and Yerevan amid fast-changing power equations in the region. Today, New Delhi is the top defence supplier to Armenia.
What drives India’s rising military footprint in a country that has a military alliance with Russia? And more importantly, why is Russia not supporting its own ally which it is treaty-bound to support? And finally, what does all this mean for the region?
A new theatre for India
Geopolitical headwinds have been paving the way for India to exploit the emerging power vacuum in the region to its benefit with impressive calibre.
For the uninitiated, Armenia, a post-Soviet State is a Collective Security Treaty Organization ally. Its arch-rival, Azerbaijan is not. CSTO is an intergovernmental military alliance of six post-Soviet states led by Russia. It’s akin to a Russian NATO. Just like Article 5 of NATO, the CSTO has Article 4, which establishes that aggression against one signatory would be perceived as an attack against all.
However, not only has Russia not supported Armenia’s claims on ethnic minorities, in the case of the Second Nagorno-Karabakh War, it has also, for decades, sold weapons to Azerbaijan.
To Armenia’s chagrin, Russia prefers to position itself as a mediator in the war rather than a security guarantor under the CSTO obligations. Russia has ignored its ally’s security concerns—disregarding their bloody struggle for the rights of ethnic Armenians of the Azeri-controlled Nagorno-Karabakh.
Russia, the biggest military supplier to Armenia traditionally, has played the two sides for decades by simultaneously supplying weapons to Azerbaijan as well. By 2015, 85 per cent of Baku’s weapons were imported from Russia.
According to the first ceasefire from 1994, Armenia had control of the territory of Nagorno-Karabakh and seven surrounding regions.
However, when the second war broke out in 2020, Azerbaijan recaptured most of its territory with the help of Turkish drones and Russian weapons. Instead of showing its commitment to Article 4 and securing Armenian security interests as per the 1994 ceasefire, Russia merely brokered another ceasefire and deployed about 2,000 peacekeepers in the region.
Armenia’s economic and military dependency on Russia has since been strained.
New Delhi started making modest strides into Armenia’s military ecosystem in 2020. About six months after the Ukraine war, clashes erupted again in Nagorno-Karabakh. Armenia was starting to get visibly frustrated with Russia, and CSTO at large.
These cracks became more apparent after the Armenian side started skipping CSTO military drills and meetings in 2023. By April 2024, Russia surprised everyone by deciding to withdraw its peacekeepers from the region, long considered its backyard. This gave Azerbaijan a free hand to do whatever it wished with Armenia.
Expectedly, the following month, a disgruntled Armenia announced its withdrawal from CSTO.
On the one hand, it reflects Russia’s waning influence in its traditional spheres of influence. Key ex-Soviet states—Ukraine openly and Armenia tacitly—are fighting an existential war to join the Western alliance. On the other hand, the war has opened up opportunities for countries such as India to ramp up their defence exports to faraway regions deserted by their traditional allies.
The lesson is simple. Geopolitics is driven by interests and not legacy hogwash.
India has surprised many by emerging as the biggest defence supplier to Armenia. France is a close second.
In fact, New Delhi-Yerevan defence consultations and partnerships have advanced throughout 2022 and 2023. In 2022, the two sides signed an array of defence deals to the tune of $250 million. These contained Indian MLRS Pinaka anti-tank rockets, Swathi Radars and ammunition.
In 2023, Yerevan appointed a defence attaché in New Delhi to oversee its burgeoning military cooperation with India. Now, Armenia is keen to get state-of-the-art Astra, a beyond-visual-range missile from India.
Armenia was also the first foreign buyer of the Akash missile system in 2022 when it placed an order of $720 million.
Yerevan’s military partnerships with India and France show its willingness to diversify from its traditional dependence on Russia.
The misjudged invasion of Ukraine has proved to be far more costly than Moscow could have envisaged at the beginning of its decision.
Also read: Ukraine invasion of Kursk has shocked Russia. Now scope for land-for-land negotiation
Many birds, one stone
India’s involvement with Armenia operates at different levels and provides a fascinating pursuit of national interest.
The country’s turnaround from a net defence importer to a net defence exporter is a truly commendable feat of the Ministry of Defence led by Rajnath Singh.
New Delhi’s stable weapons supplies to Yerevan between 2020-2024 have been crucial in India’s status as a weapons exporter in the Caucasus, despite the presence of other suppliers like France. In fact, we could soon see joint exports of co-designed, co-developed and co-produced equipment, as stated under the new ambitious defence industry roadmap between New Delhi and Paris.
At a regional level, India’s overtures in South Caucasus will reshape and re-flavour the regional security landscape as arms flows change fundamentally.
Geopolitically, it is India’s balancing act against the nexus of Turkey and Pakistan. Islamabad has consistently supported the Azeri side, towing the Turkish line in lieu of its support to the menace in Kashmir.
Armenian President Nikol Pashinyan has even alleged that Pakistani “special forces” were complicit in fighting alongside the Azeri army in the 2020 war. This allegation is not baseless. Pakistan did indeed sign a trilateral agreement with Turkey and Azerbaijan in 2017, which was followed by yet another affirmation of this tri-partite nexus under the Islamabad Declaration of 2021.
This declaration paved the way for joint cooperation in building connectivity and mobilising investments. This nexus also manifested in joint military exercises, the first of which was in 2021.
India was quick to follow suit by forwarding a trilateral cooperation framework with Iran and Armenia in 2023, but it has been limited to economic activities.
In supporting Armenia, India also enjoys the support from its new strategic partner, Greece. The country has many an axe to grind with Turkey over disputed gas fields in the eastern Mediterranean.
India has originally tried to engage both Baku and Yerevan. The three countries are part of the International North-South Transport Corridor and the Persian–Gulf Black Sea International Transport Corridor projects, but the internal dynamics are getting complicated.
The growing strategic closeness between India and Armenia is likely to have implications for INSTC, where Azerbaijan is more active.
The Indian strategic community was caught by surprise when the Pakistani envoy to Russia thanked Moscow for inviting it to join INSTC. It has now dawned on India that contrary to its interests, Russia is also pushing for not only Pakistan and Azerbaijan but also Turkey to join BRICS.
Patterns of geopolitical alliances change as national interests diverge and re-converge.
The changing geopolitics of Eurasia will also test the tenacity of India- Russia friendship, which has been regarded as an idyllic constant in a fluid world.
While both sides would sincerely engage the other to maintain room to manoeuvre, the divergence of interests between Moscow and New Delhi is likely to rise given the repercussions of the Ukraine War.
The unprecedented deepening of the Russia-China alignment is already concerning. The two sides also seem to have conflicting perspectives on BRICS expansion and non-Western versus anti-Western order. Now, the waning of Russian influence in the South Caucasus set to benefit India is another wrench in their allyship.
The writer is an Associate Fellow, Europe and Eurasia Center, at the Manohar Parrikar Institute for Defence Studies and Analyses. She tweets @swasrao. Views are personal.
(Edited by Theres Sudeep)
Very simplystic write up, based on knowledge not directly from the ground but based on western distorted thesis.. Western formula to break Georgia from Russia collapsed and same would happen in Armenia, because of very deep people to people relationship, also like Georgian economy, Armenian economy heavily linked and dependent on Russia. For the west to break those links is almost impossible. West can never be a substitute to Russia in this part of this world. In Ukraine West succeeded partially because of the close link of Western Ukrainians to fascist Germany historically. US along with NATO allies based their geopolitical games on support from west Ukrainians. And it looks like now USA with its NATO allies at best would be able break Ukraine in two or more number of parts. Western strategy of buying top leadership along with top corrupt bureaucracy in USSR and subsequently in the CIS countries cannot work in the longterm as it is being proved with subsequent events. In just 30 years how common people in all over CIS countries has become so much anti American, it is simply unbelievable, this can be compared to the Pakistan and Arab world.