YEREVAN (Reuters) – Armenia will welcome the expansion of a Russian military base on its territory and the redeployment of some Russian forces closer to its border with Azerbaijan following a conflict with its neighbor last year, his defense minister said on Monday.
Ethnic Armenian troops in the Nagorno-Karabakh region ceded areas in and around the enclave to Azerbaijan in a six-week conflict in 2020 that claimed thousands of lives.
Russian peacekeepers are deployed in the enclave, and under a formal defense agreement with Armenia, Russia has a full-fledged military base in the city of Gyumri near the Turkish border with an estimated 3,000 troops.
Russia said in November that it was employing nearly 2,000 conscripts as part of the peacekeeping mission.
“The question of expanding and strengthening the Russian military base on the territory of Armenia has always been on the agenda,” Armenian Defense Minister Vagharshak Harutyunyan told the Russian RIA news agency in an interview published on Monday. is.
“The Armenian side has always been interested in this.”
Harutyunyan did not say whether there are concrete plans for a possible expansion.
Armenian opposition politicians have called for the establishment of a second Russian base in the southern Armenian region of Armenia, between Azerbaijan and the Azerbaijani slave Nakhchivan.
Harutyunyan said he saw no need for Russia to formally open a second military base, but said the two countries were considering moving a military unit from the existing base to eastern Armenia, near the border with Azerbaijan. to span.
Harutyunyan did not disclose the purpose of the possible redeployment or its exact location.
The Russian Ministry of Defense did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
The Armenian opposition, calling on Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan to resign over the outcome of the conflict, planned to host a new street protest on Monday.
(Reporting by Nvard Hovhannisyan and Gabrielle Tétrault-Farber; Edited by Andrew Osborn and Gareth Jones)