Armenia has successfully blocked a major arms sale from Belarus to Azerbaijan, Belarusian and Armenian sources reported.
Azerbaijan has long been examining Polonez missiles manufactured in Belarus to counter Armenia’s acquisition in 2016 of Russian Iskander missiles. When Azerbaijan’s Minister of Defense Zakir Hasanov visited Minsk in October, the Ministry of Defense published photos of him in front of a Polonez. The Azerbaijani media reported that the transaction was almost complete. “Azerbaijan responds to Armenia with Lukashenko rockets”, headlined a Haqqin.az newspaper.
But now, a Belarusian military analyst, Aleksander Alesin, said that Armenia had succeeded in blocking this deal. “We wanted to sell Polonezos to Azerbaijan,” he told Russian newspaper Komsomolskaya Pravda. “But Armenia, our partner in the CSTO, was against it,” he said, referring to the Collective Security Treaty Organization, the military alliance led by Russia. “The deal did not work, and probably the first [export] customer for the Polonez will be Kazakhstan,” said Alesin.
Sputnik Armenia reported that a source at the Armenian Ministry of Defense confirmed this information. “Our source pointed out that Armenia, at the highest level, stressed that the agreements that threatened the balance of power in the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict zone were unacceptable,” said Sputnik. Since 1994, Armenian forces have been controlling the Karabakh territory and the seven surrounding districts of Azerbaijan, which Baku has pledged to take back, by force if necessary.
“In its words [from the source], Yerevan has turned a blind eye to the fact that Belarus has in recent years delivered a large quantity of weapons and military equipment, modernized combat aircraft and aircrafts. 25 and Su-27, but now Armenia has decided not to be quiet, “says Sputnik.
According to data from the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute, Belarus has also supplied Azerbaijan with T-72M1 tanks and various artillery pieces over the last ten years.
An Armenian analyst quoted by Sputnik said the deal could have collapsed for reasons unrelated to anything in Yerevan. “It is possible that the agreement was actually canceled,” said analyst Karen Vrtanesyan. “On the other hand, it is possible that this was never planned, since all the noise concerning the Polonez came from the Azerbaijani side. Even the Belarussian press relied on Azerbaijani sources for their statements. “
And it’s not as if Belarus had completely eliminated Azerbaijan. Elsewhere in the interview in Komsomolskaya Pravda, Alesin describes Azerbaijan as “one of the greatest partners of Belarus”. We sell them air defense systems, especially modernized Buk-MB air defense systems. In October, there was shooting [in Azerbaijan], Azerbaijanis were satisfied and there are prospects for increased cooperation. He added that Belarus will soon start selling “non-lethal weapons” to Armenia.
The battle between Armenia, Azerbaijan and Belarus is analogous to a bigger battle between the two enemies of the Caucasus and Russia. Russia has sold billions of dollars worth of arms to Azerbaijan, while adhering to a mutual defense pact with Armenia, and supplying weapons to Yerevan at cost.
Despite the apparent success of stopping the sale of Polonez, Armenia can still consider Belarus an unreliable partner. While Russia supplies arms to both sides, it does so in a way that keeps the process “under control,” said MPP Mihran Hakobyan of the ruling Republican party at Tert.am. “Belarus is not the kind of country to sell arms to Azerbaijan and later keep control of the whole process.”
Joshua Kucera
Eurasianet.org