Russia tried to stage coup in Armenia, prosecutors allege

Moscow paid and trained a ring of insurgents in a bid to overthrow Armenia’s pro-Western government earlier this year, prosecutors in the country have said, but local security forces disrupted the alleged plot.

In a statement on Wednesday, the Investigative Committee of the Republic of Armenia said seven people would be charged with “preparing to usurp power … using violence and the threat of violence to take over the powers of government.”

According to the officials, six Armenians were recruited to undergo three months of training in Russia and were paid monthly salaries of 220,000 rubles ($2,377) while learning how to use weaponry. They also reportedly underwent background checks and polygraph tests to determine their allegiances, before being transferred to “Arbat military base” in Rostov-on-Don, southern Russia.

The Russian Ministry of Defense did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Relations between Armenia and its historical ally, Russia, have soured since Moscow invaded Ukraine in February 2022, with the South Caucasus country freezing its membership of the Moscow-led CSTO military alliance, dispatching humanitarian aid to Kyiv and staging joint drills with U.S. forces.

At the same time, Armenia’s long-time rival Azerbaijan has forged closer relations with the Kremlin, with President Ilham Aliyev holding friendly talks with President Vladimir Putin in Baku last month. Moscow has accused the EU of trespassing in its self-declared sphere of influence by signing partnership deals with the Armenian government.

Russian border guards, who had been stationed in Armenia since the fall of the Soviet Union in 1991, were asked to withdraw from their posts earlier this year. Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan told POLITICO in September 2023 that a Russian peacekeeping mission in Azerbaijan’s breakaway Nagorno-Karabakh region had failed to do its job. Just days later, Moscow’s forces stood aside when Azerbaijan launched a new offensive in the enclave, sparking the mass exodus of its entire Armenian population.

Speaking earlier on Wednesday, Pashinyan vowed that Armenia’s pivot toward the West would continue. “If we see a more or less realistic possibility of becoming a full member of the European Union,” he said, “we will not miss that moment.”