By Eduard Abrahamyan
July 24th, 2016, The CACI Analyst
On June 30, Armenia’s Parliament ratified the Russia-Armenia United Regional System of Air Defense in the Caucasian Region, thereby moving it to the operational stage. The agreement was preliminarily signed in in Moscow by Armenia’s and Russia’s defense ministers in December 2015, on the basis of analogous accords with Belarus and Kazakhstan in 2009 and 2013 respectively. While the approval was accompanied with speculations on how Armenia could benefit from the accord, Moscow’s potential to exploit the agreement in its anti-Western posture has received less attention. In particular, the joint air-defense system presumably constitutes a reinforcing element of Moscow’s anti-access/area denial (A2/AD) capabilities in the eastern flank of the Black Sea region.
- South Caucasus
- Russia
- Armenia
- Russia Armenia air defence system
- Belarus
- Kazakhstan
- Russia A2D2 capability
- NATO
- Philip Breedlove
- General Peter Pavel
- General Frank Gorenc
- Georgia
- CSTO
- South Ossetia
- Abkhazia
- Crimea annexation
- Russia Southern Military District
- S300PS surface to air missile system
- Baltic states
- Black Sea region
- Eastern Europe