Armenia has announced that it will hold the joint “Eagle Partner 2023” military drills with the US next week, a development that is likely to provoke Russia.

The Armenian Ministry of Defence announced that the aim of the exercise “Eagle Partner 2023”, to be held from September 11 to 20, is to prepare its forces to participate in international peacekeeping missions. However, it did not go on to say how many US and Armenian military personnel will participate.

Russia maintains a military base in Armenia and considers itself to have primacy in the South Caucasus region, which was part of the Soviet Union until 1991.

It maintains a peacekeeping force in the region to oversee compliance with the accord that ended a war between Armenia and Azerbaijan in 2020, the second to break out between the two countries since the collapse of the Soviet Union.

Armenian Prime Minister, Nikol Pashinyan, said in an interview with an Italian newspaper over the weekend that Russia had failed to protect Armenia from what he called an ongoing attack by Azerbaijan.

He added that Russia’s war in Ukraine means that Moscow cannot meet all of Armenia’s security needs.

Kremlin spokesman, Dmitry Peskov, told reporters yesterday, Tuesday, that he disagreed with Pashinyan’s comments, adding that Russia is an absolutely integral part of this region and plays a consistent, highly important role in stabilizing the situation in the region.

Source: APA MPA

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