Despite signing of strategic partnership pact, US halts projects in Armenia
OC MediaWithin a day, Armenia has announced that two planned activities with the US did not take place or were halted. The news came as the US has begun sweeping cuts to its foreign aid programmes.
On Thursday, the Deputy Chair of the Armenian State Revenue Committee (SRC), Rafael Gevorgyan told Armenpress that the planned visit of the US Customs and Border Protection team to Armenia ‘did not take place’.
Armenpress noted that the SRC did not provide any additional details about the visit, ‘conditioned by [the fact] that the team has not yet arrived in Armenia’.
The visit was announced by former US Secretary of State Antony Blinken on the day the Strategic Partnership with Armenia was signed in January. Blinken elaborated that the visit would take place ‘in the coming weeks’, for the group to work with their Armenian counterparts ‘on border security capacity building, strengthening security cooperation’.
The announcement came as Russian border guards were withdrawn in 2024 from several locations in Armenia amid Yerevan’s deteriorating relations with the Kremlin.
Following Blinken’s announcement, Armenian Deputy Foreign Minister Paruyr Hovhannisyan stated that the training provided could eventually lead to the withdrawal of Russian border guards from Armenia’s shared border with Turkey and Iran.
He noted that ‘ideally every country must be able to control its borders. And this assistance concerns the increase of our capacity through exchange of relevant experience’.
As the news came of the unfulfilled visit, on Friday, the Lithuanian Foreign Ministry announced that from 24–28 February, ‘a study visit of representatives of the Armenian Security Council, Customs Service and Border Guard’ took place in Lithuania, during which the Armenian side got acquainted with the ‘functioning of Lithuania’s integrated border management system and the model of ensuring the effectiveness of state border protection’.
On Tuesday, Lithuanian Foreign Minister Kęstutis Budrys had a telephone conversation with Armen Grigoryan, the Secretary of Armenia’s Security Council, in which they discussed security challenges facing the Baltic Sea and South Caucasus regions.
‘Budrys called on Armenia to continue its democratic reforms and confirmed that Lithuania was ready to continue sharing its experience in economic and energy diversification, developing a national crisis management system and increasing the country’s resilience to external threats’, the statement issued by the Lithuanian Foreign Ministry read.
Cyber laboratory ‘on halt’
The Strategic Partnership document was signed by Armenian Foreign Minister Ararat Mirzoyan and Blinken, and stresses a mutual desire to strengthen relations across the diplomatic, economic, energy, high-tech, educational, scientific, cultural, legal, defence, and security fields.
At the time of the signing, Mirzoyan also expressed Armenia’s eagerness to continue working with the incoming administration of President-elect Donald Trump in order ‘to fulfil the ambitious goals outlined in our Strategic Partnership Charter’.
Nonetheless, beyond the unfulfilled visit, Armenia has said other collaborative projects with the US have been halted.
Earlier on Thursday, the Armenian Interior Ministry told Armenpress that work on a cyber lab was ‘temporarily halted because of the latest developments in the US pertaining to foreign programs’.
It also noted that ‘a preliminary agreement’ had been reached with the US side regarding the creation of a cyber laboratory in Armenia, ‘within the framework of combating cybercrime’.
On 20 January, Trump applied a 90-day pause in the US foreign development assistance ‘for assessment of programmatic efficiencies and consistency with United States foreign policy’. While it was initially announced as being temporary, it is unclear when, or if, foreign aid programmes would resume.
During his visit to the US in early February, Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinya met with members of the Senate and Congress, discussing prospects for developing the partnership between their two countries and the ongoing peace talks with Azerbaijan.
According to Pashinyan’s administration, Republican Senator Roger Wicker and the congresspeople who met with Pashinyan ‘emphasised the importance of deepening cooperation in the areas envisaged by the Strategic Partnership Document’ and ‘noted the need for an active dialogue with the new US administration aimed continuously advancing the bilateral agenda.’
