Armenia 2024: Quo vadis Yerevan? The difficult path out of the Russian trap

The last stage of the war between Armenia and Azerbaijan over Nagorno-Karabakh shook Southern Caucasus politics at its very foundation. The traditional parameters used for assessing and deciphering regional politics have been upended, as the alli- ances and alignments developed over the previous thirty years have collapsed and, in many ways, have being overturned. Moreover, the ongoing conflict in Ukraine only adds uncertainty to an already unpredictable regional scenario. At the heart of the regional upheavals lies the crisis of the decades-old alliance between Armenia and Russia, around which Yerevan had built its entire security policy. As a consequence, its failure to function during the Karabakh war left the country almost defenseless in the face of Azerbaijan’s military might. As over-dependence on Moscow turned into vulnerability, the diversification of Armenian foreign and security policies became an imperative with a view to ensure the country’s resilience to external shocks. The article examines Yerevan’s attempt to escape from the multifaceted «Russian trap» and explores the consequences and constraints of this endeavor on both international and domestic levels.