YEREVAN (Reuters) – Armenia would welcome the expansion of a Russian military base in its territory and the redistribution of some Russian forces near its border with Azerbaijan after a conflict with its neighbor last year, said its defense minister in Monday.
Armenian ethnic troops in the Nagorno-Karabakh region ceded areas of territory in and around the enclave to Azerbaijan in a six-week conflict in 2020 that claimed thousands of lives.
Russian peacekeeping troops are stationed in the enclave and, under a formal defense pact with Armenia, Russia has a full-fledged military base in the city of Gyumri, near the border with Turkey, with some 3,000 soldiers.
Russia said in November that it was deploying almost 2,000 military personnel as part of the peacekeeping mission.
“The question of expanding and strengthening the Russian military base on Armenian territory has always been on the agenda,” Armenian Defense Minister Vagharshak Harutyunyan told the Russian news agency RIA in an interview published on Monday.
“The Armenian side has always been interested in this.”
Harutyunyan did not say whether there were concrete plans for potential expansion.
Armenian opposition politicians have called for the creation of a second Russian base in the Syunik region of southern Armenia, between Azerbaijan and the Azerbaijani enclave of Nakhchivan.
Harutyunyan said he saw no need for Russia to formally open a second military base, but said the two countries were considering sending a military unit from the existing base to eastern Armenia, near the border with Azerbaijan.
Harutyunyan did not reveal the purpose of the potential redistribution or its exact location.
The Russian Ministry of Defense did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
The Armenian opposition, which asked Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan to resign because of the outcome of the conflict, planned to hold a new street protest on Monday.
(Reporting by Nvard Hovhannisyan and Gabrielle Tétrault-Farber; Editing by Andrew Osborn and Gareth Jones)