The Secret Arms Deal that Cost Putin an Ally

Artillery and drones were used extensively in combat between Azerbaijani and Armenian forces in recent years. This included during a 2020 war between the two sides over the breakaway region of Nagorno-Karabakh, which lies inside Azerbaijan’s internationally recognized borders but has been governed as an unrecognized state by its Armenian population since a brutal conflict that followed the fall of the Soviet Union. An Azerbaijani offensive last September ended the region’s de facto independence and sparked a mass exodus of its 100,000 inhabitants.

One of the diplomatic communications seen by POLITICO said that Belarusian enterprises were playing an active role “in the restoration of de-occupied territories of Azerbaijan, as well as the export of Belarusian goods and services” to the country.

Azerbaijani forces also launched incursions into the territory of the Republic of Armenia proper in September 2022, taking key strategic heights. Armenia called on the CSTO for support at the time, but later accused the bloc of failing to honor its commitments after it offered only to send a fact-finding delegation. Since then, Pashinyan, Armenia’s leader, has struck a deal to expand an EU monitoring mission on the tense border between the two former Soviet republics and invited U.S. troops for joint training drills.

Eduard Arakelyan, a military analyst at Yerevan’s Regional Center for Democracy and Security, verified that the leaked documents pertained to hardware used by Azerbaijan in recent wars, both in Nagorno-Karabakh and against the Republic of Armenia itself.

“This equipment was used with devastating effect against Armenian troops and was provided by a country that is supposed to be an ally of Armenia,” he said. “In formal terms, it’s a complete breach of the CSTO alliance but, in practice, we’ve always known the bloc was more supportive of Azerbaijan.”

Despite on paper being an ally of Armenia, Belarusian President Aleksandr Lukashenko has previously described Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev as “our man” and said it would be “wrong” for the CSTO to oppose him. Aliyev, for his part, said in 2022 that “we have more friends in the CSTO than Armenia.”

However, according to experts, Belarus — one of Moscow’s closest allies — was unlikely to be acting without the tacit support of the Kremlin itself. “This truly shows that with friends like Vladimir Putin, nobody needs enemies,” said Ivana Stradner, a research fellow at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies.

“It’s ridiculous to think these transfers could have taken place without Moscow’s knowledge, and that Russia couldn’t have stopped them if it wanted to,” she added. “There is no such thing as loyalty when it comes to Moscow — it’s all about preserving their own security even if it’s at the expense of their own allies.”

Belarus summoned Armenia’s ambassador to a meeting at the foreign ministry on Thursday, June 13, after Pashinyan aired his accusations the previous day. The envoy was later recalled to Yerevan, and Belarus’ ambassador returned to Minsk, as part of a severing of diplomatic relations between the two nations.