Papikian said that Yerevan does not intend to engage in an arms race with Baku.
“But this doesn’t mean that Armenia will stop buying weapons and military hardware and modernizing its army,” he told a news conference.
He said it will also continue to fortify its long border with Azerbaijan despite what he called the effective establishment of “peace” between the two South Caucasus nations. Armenia needs to boost its “long-term defense capability regardless of whether or not there are threats” to its security, added Papikian.
The Armenian government controversially decided last fall to cut its 2026 defense budget by over 15 percent to 563 billion drams ($1.47 billion). The cut denounced by opposition groups contrasts with Azerbaijan’s plans to continue boosting spending on defense and national security which was projected to total $5 billion in 2025.
Armenian defense spending had risen steadily and significantly since the 2020 war in Nagorno-Karabakh. Prime Minister Nikol Pashinian first signaled his intention to reverse this trend about two weeks after an Armenian-Azerbaijani peace treaty was initialed during his talks with Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev hosted by U.S. President Donald Trump in Washington last August.
Pashinian’s government went on to shorten compulsory military service in the country from 24 to 18 months, sparking opposition claims that it is bowing to Azerbaijan’s demands to downsize the Armenian army. Papikian again insisted on Tuesday that the resulting reduction in the number of active-duty conscripts will be offset by more contract soldiers recruited by the military.
The minister declined to give any details of more arms acquisitions planned by the government.
Russia had long been Armenia’s main supplier of weapons and ammunition. Tensions between the two nations have steadily grown in recent years, with Yerevan accusing Moscow of not honoring its security commitments.
The South Caucasus country has been looking for other arms suppliers also because of the continuing war in Ukraine which is absorbing the bulk of Russia’s military resources. It has signed a series of multimillion-dollar defense contracts with India as well as Frane since 2022.