Armenia’s drift away from Russia is no longer theoretical. It is now visible in policy, diplomacy and public mood. The question is not whether Yerevan is trying to reduce its dependence on Moscow. The question is whether it can do so without paying a heavy price.

For decades, Armenia treated Russia as its main security guarantor. That arrangement was built on military dependence, energy links, membership in Russian-led institutions and a shared fear of Turkey and Azerbaijan. But the old bargain has been badly damaged. After the 2020 war with Azerbaijan, the border escalations of 2021 and 2022, and Azerbaijan’s full takeover of Nagorno-Karabakh in September 2023, many Armenians began to ask what Russian protection was actually worth.

The displacement from Nagorno-Karabakh was the decisive psychological rupture. According to UNHCR, more than 100,000 refugees arrived in Armenia from Karabakh in just one week in September 2023. For Armenia, this was not only a humanitarian crisis. It was also the collapse of a decades-old belief that Russia, with peacekeepers on the ground and deep influence over the region, would prevent the worst outcome.

Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan has since moved further away from Moscow. In February 2024, he said Armenia had frozen its participation in the Collective Security Treaty Organization, the Russian-led military alliance, because it had failed Armenia, especially in 2021 and 2022. This was not just a bureaucratic decision. It was a public statement that Yerevan no longer trusted the security architecture that had tied it to Russia since the post-Soviet period.

That mistrust had been growing for years. During the 2020 war, Armenian confidence in Russian military technology was badly shaken by Azerbaijan’s effective use of drones, modern weapons and Turkish support. Even the controversy over Russian-made Iskander missiles became politically symbolic. Whether the problem was performance, use or information, the dispute revealed a deeper Armenian doubt about Russian arms and Russian guarantees.

There is also a harder fact behind this disappointment. Russia was not only Armenia’s main supplier of major weapons. According to........

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