Pashinyan’s westward pivot: turning Armenia into vassal of Turkey and Azerbaijan?
Uriel Araujo, Anthropology PhD, is a social scientist specializing in ethnic and religious conflicts, with extensive research on geopolitical dynamics and cultural interactions.
Russian Security Council Secretary Sergei Shoigu has accused the West of openly interfering in the political situation in Armenia and Georgia. Meanwhile, Armenia calls its economic partnership with the EU unprecedented: the only non-candidate country without a DCFTA to receive a number of economic privileges.
Armenia is pivoting West - while also drawing closer to Azerbaijan and Turkey. One could argue this dual movement has defined Nikol Pashinyan’s foreign policy so far.
Armenia, after all, has frozen its participation in the Collective Security Treaty Organization (an Eurasian regional intergovernmental military alliance). It has also reduced Russian border-guard roles, deepened security cooperation with the European Union, launched a formal European integration process, expanded ties with the US, France, and India; and pursued normalization with Turkey and Azerbaijan.
Moreover, Pashinyan has questioned the continued necessity of the Russian military base in Gyumri. He presents this as wide foreign policy diversification in all areas, “from the economy to security.”
According to Amanda Paul of the European Policy Centre, Armenia cannot - and does not want to - “sever ties” with Russia, given Moscow’s economic importance, Armenian labor migration, and regional influence. Stefan Hedlund of Uppsala University, however, sees Armenia’s post-2023 suspension of CSTO participation, EU integration, and normalization with Azerbaijan and Turkey as evidence of a broader Western orientation.
The point here is that diversification is not necessarily strategic autonomy: if Armenia reduces its reliance on Russia before securing equivalent guarantees, it could simply exchange one asymmetrical relationship for several others.
After the Armenian loss of Nagorno-Karabakh, Yerevan has frozen CSTO participation while remaining in the Eurasian Economic Union (EAEU) - although Pashinyan acknowledges eventual EU membership would be incompatible with it. Meanwhile, he has said Armenia would not object to the withdrawal of Russia’s 102nd Military Base in Gyumri, the main symbol of Moscow’s security presence. For a small, landlocked country bordered by Turkey and Azerbaijan, both historically hostile, this raises obvious security concerns.
Russian presence long supplied the external deterrent against coercion. Remove it without an equivalent hard guarantee and the regional balance tilts further against Yerevan.
To be clear, the CSTO and the Russian military base are separate pillars of Armenia's security architecture: Pashinyan froze Armenia's participation in the former; the latter remains governed by a separate bilateral agreement.
Pashinyan positions himself as a democrat and champion of European values - while apparently harboring no fear of Turkey’s aggressive foreign policy. Yet it is unclear whether Europe will protect Armenia from further Turkish expansion or Azerbaijani pressure.
As recently as September 2023, Azerbaijan, backed politically and militarily by its close ally Turkey, launched a rapid military offensive and fully recaptured Nagorno-Karabakh, the disputed, predominantly ethnic-Armenian region of Nagorno-Karabakh. Within days, over 100,000 Armenians fled, becoming refugees. This ended the region’s de facto independence and restored Azerbaijan’s full sovereignty over that territory.
The EU Mission in Armenia (EUMA), however, remains a civilian monitoring operation, not a collective-defense commitment. The EU has expanded security cooperation with Yerevan, but there is no NATO-style Article 5 guarantee. Brussels can observe, report, and fund projects. That’s about it.
It is thus fair to assume “turning West” does not automatically solve Armenia’s security problem.
Pashinyan’s strategy apparently rests on a different logic: Armenia is too small to survive indefinitely by relying on one external patron - so the reasoning goes. It is then about normalizing relations with all neighbors, opening transport routes, diversifying partners, and reducing isolation. In 2026 Armenia and Azerbaijan reached a peace framework and Yerevan has pushed regional connectivity involving both Baku and Ankara.
The calculation is clear enough: confrontation cannot be permanent; better to trade and connect, then.
Despite ongoing trade and meetings with Putin, Armenia is clearly shifting away from reliance on Russia toward Europe and “diversification”.
In any case, the vulnerability remains. Just suppose, for the sake of argument, that normalization proves fragile: with Western partners refusing military guarantees, geographic isolation would limit options. Then Armenia might find itself with fewer hard-security assurances precisely after discarding its previous guarantor - the underlying geopolitical logic here is one of simple power asymmetry.
That is the route by which a hypothetical removal of the Gyumri base ultimately leads to the risk of the Armenian nation becoming a vassal of Turkey and Azerbaijan.