The parade took place on the 108th anniversary of the proclamation of the first independent Armenian republic that followed centuries of foreign rule. The anniversary is a public holiday called Republic Day.
Hundreds of Armenian soldiers marched through Yerevan’s central Republic Square, followed by columns of mostly non-Russian military hardware. It included air-defense, artillery and rocket systems purchased from India in multimillion-dollar arms deals signed since 2022 as well as French CAESAR self-propelled howitzers and Bastion armored vehicles.
CAESR is one of the most advanced artillery systems of its kind in the world. A French-Armenian contract signed two years ago reportedly called for the delivery 36 such howitzers to the Armenian army.
The army also revealed the acquisition of AD-08 Majid, a short-range air-defense system designed and manufactured by neighboring Iran. It is apparently the first Iranian weapon ever supplied to Armenia. Also demonstrated were Chinese-made CH-4 long-range drones as well as various types of smaller attack and reconnaissance drones manufactured by Armenian defense companies.
“Today we present to you Armenia’s new army with new weapons, new uniforms and a new ideology,” Prime Minister Nikol Pashinian said in a speech delivered at the start of the parade. “The core of this ideology is the following: the only task of the army is to defend the internationally recognized sovereign territory of Armenia.”
Russia had long been Armenia’s principal supplier of weapons and ammunition. The Armenian government has been looking for alternative sources of weaponry due to its growing tensions with Moscow and the continuing war in Ukraine that absorbs the bulk of military hardware manufactured in Russia.
Pashinian claimed that the arms acquisitions showcased during the parade were made possible by his controversial decision in 2022 to recognize Azerbaijani sovereignty over Nagorno-Karabakh. His political opponents and other critics maintain that the move paved the way for Azerbaijan’s full recapture of Karabakh in 2023, which forced the region’s entire ethnic Armenian population to flee to Armenia. They also say Pashinian has failed to rebuild Armenia’s armed forces since their defeat in the 2020 war with Azerbaijan.
The previous demonstrations of Armenian military power had been timed to coincide with the country’s main Independence Day marked on September 21. Opposition leaders say Pashinian deliberately staged the latest parade on Republic Day in a bid to increase his chances of winning parliamentary elections slated for June 7.
“The context of the parade is that the current prime minister and his entourage, who humiliate our soldiers, their families and war veterans on a daily basis, are trying to hide their failures of the last six years behind the backs of our heroic soldiers,” Arman Tatoyan, who leads one of the opposition parties running in the elections, charged in a video message to citizens.