The Purpose of Deployment of Russian Military Police in Armenia – Creeping Occupation of Armenia

Recently, Russian media made a statement that the Russian government is planning to deploy special units of Russian military police trained in Vladikavkaz and equipped with weaponry and armored vehicles in Yerevan and Gyumri in order to enforce the discipline of the existing units of the Russian military bases in Armenia.

The deployment of Russian military police in Gyumri and Yerevan is completely illegal and pursues the goal of the occupation of Armenia. In the recent days, the website aravot.am published an excerpt from the agreement on the current dislocation of the Russian military base in the territory of Armenia.

The second article of the agreement from August 29, 1997, between Russian Federation and the Republic of Armenia states that armament outside of the points of the location of the Russian military base can be issued to the units as last resort. Moreover, storage, wearing, or use of weaponry is only allowed for self-defense, e.g. defense of the property of the military base, servicemen, and their family members. The units of the Russian army in Armenia do not have the authority to regulate, enforce, or otherwise influence civilian traffic.

Thereby, the only purpose of the deployment of additional, specially trained units in Armenia is to factually occupy Armenia. Despite this, there are some entities that attempt to popularize the invasion of Russian in Armenia, including such media as Verelq.

Verelq published a material titled “Debates surrounding the military base in Gyumri – what is it in the military police that doesn’t satisfy the western grant-eaters?”. This material analyzes the examples of states with foreign military contingent in their territory, but the author doesn’t cite any agreements and doesn’t mention the illegality of the deployment of Russian military police in Gyumri and Yerevan.

There are a lot of such web resources and entities, and they essentially work to disrupt the sovereignty and physical safety of Armenia and its citizens. The national security services of Armenia should have been taking care of those entities since the day the statements began to circulate in the Russian media. But given the impudent propaganda of the news, security services haven’t done it yet. This means that the question of the participation of Armenia’s political leadership in the popularization and promotion of the deployment of the Russian military police remains open.

by Վիգեն Ավետիսյան