New Delhi: Azerbaijan’s President Ilham Aliyev has slammed the sale of Indian-made arms to Armenia, while also questioning their quality. This comes amid a decades-long conflict between Armenia and Azerbaijan over the disputed Nagorno-Karabakh region and at a time when New Delhi has been attempting to boost its geopolitical heft in the region.
“Countries who supply Armenia with weapons, like France and India, now pour the oil on fire and create unrealistic illusions in Armenia that using these weapons they can take back Karabakh,” Aliyev said Wednesday at an event in Baku titled ‘Karabakh: Back Home After 30 Years. Accomplishments and Challenges’.
“I don’t want to go into details about the quality of these weapons, though, I know what kind of weapons these are. But even if these are state-of-the-art weapons, they (Armenians) have no chance (of winning), because the war and the result of war is decided not by weapons, but by people, by spirit,” he added.
In September 2022, Armenia signed a government-to-government contract with India for the indigenous Pinaka multi-barrel rocket launchers, anti-tank missiles and ammunition. ThePrint had reported earlier that this contract was valued at an estimated Rs 2,000 crore.
Asked to comment on President Aliyev’s comments, the Armenian Embassy in Delhi said in a statement to ThePrint: “India is an important pillar of global and regional stability and Armenia values the balanced and stabilising position of India in these times of global turmoil.”
The 10th round of political consultations between Armenian and Indian foreign ministries was held in New Delhi last month. It was co-chaired by Armenia’s Deputy Foreign Minister Mnatsakan Safaryan and Sanjay Verma, Secretary (West) of the Ministry of External Affairs (MEA). According to the MEA, the two spoke on the need to broaden trade and economic ties as well as mutually beneficial cooperation “within a number of multilateral platforms”.
Armenia has traditionally supported India on the Kashmir issue and has no diplomatic ties with Pakistan, which refused to recognise Armenian independence in the early 1990s.
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Armenia-India arms sales, trilateral alliances
According to reports, it is believed that the shipments of Pinaka rocket launchers, artillery guns (mounted gun systems) manufactured by Pune-based Kalyani group, anti tank missiles and various other munitions from India have reached Armenia.
ThePrint reached the MEA spokesperson via text for confirmation but had not received a response by the time of publication.
The Armenian Embassy in Delhi also did not confirm whether Indian-made arms had reached Yerevan. Albeit, it stated that deepening security and defence ties with India is “one of (Armenia’s) foreign policy priorities.”
Armenia has also been eyeing more defence deals with India for procurement of drones, counter-drone measures and loitering munitions, as well as mid-range surface-to-air missile (SAM) systems like Akash developed by Defence Research and Development Organisation (DRDO).
The former Soviet Republic has also sought to procure the mounted 155-mm, 39-calibre artillery system manufactured by Bharat Forge, a private defence firm part of Pune-based conglomerate Kalyani Group.
Aditya Bhan, a fellow with the Observer Research Foundation (ORF), said Iran has been a critical transport partner for these shipments. “All weapons consignments from India to Armenia are being exclusively routed through Iran. In fact, these are the same routes used by Russian shipments to Armenia via Iran. Russian supplies have, of course, dried up because of the Ukraine war. Armenia has in fact complained about not having received deliveries of even those munitions which it has paid the Russians for,” he told ThePrint.
In July this year, local media in Azerbaijan reported that a convoy moving through Iran’s Nurduz border checkpoint into Armenia was carrying Indian-made Pinaka multi-barrel rocket launchers. Reports claimed the convoy was carrying cargo delivered to the Iranian port of Bandar Abbas from the eastern coast of the Caspian Sea.
The incident prompted a foreign policy adviser to the Azerbaijan president to call on the Indian Ambassador, Sridharan Madhusudhanan, to convey concerns about expanding military cooperation between Armenia and India.
Iran and India have traditionally supported Armenia on the Nagorno-Karabakh issue and earlier this year, the three countries established a first of its kind trilateral group.
In April, delegations from India, Armenia and Iran held a round of political discussions in Yerevan on economic issues, regional communication channels and more.
The Indian delegation was led by J.P. Singh, the Joint Secretary of the MEA’s PAI (Pakistan, Afghanistan & Iran) division. He was joined by Mnatsakan Safaryan, the Deputy Foreign Minister of Armenia, Seyed Rasoul Mousavi, an Assistant of the Foreign Minister of Iran and head of the Iranian foreign ministry’s regional general department of South Asia.
The development came in the backdrop of intensified cooperation between Azerbaijan, Pakistan and Turkey in recent years. In late 2020, when the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict flared up again, Azerbaijan defeated Armenia with the help of Turkish-made drones, while Armenia only fought with tanks, artillery and air defence systems.
(Edited by Amrtansh Arora)