India’s Defense Secretary Rajesh Kumar Singh met Armenia’s Defense Minister Suren Papikian and army chief of staff, Lieutenant-General Eduard Asrian during a two-day visit to the Armenian capital. The Indian Defense Ministry said the visit is designed to “chart the course of future India–Armenia defense and strategic cooperation.”
“The two sides explored new avenues to further strengthen bilateral defense cooperation, reaffirming their shared commitment to deepening and elevating the India-Armenia defense partnership,” the ministry said in a separate statement on Singh’s talks with Papikian. It did not go into details.
In a short social media post, Papikian said they discussed Indian-Armenian “military-technical cooperation,” an official euphemism for arms supplies. He did not elaborate.
The Armenian Defense Ministry reported, for its part, that Asrian and Singh “exchanged documents defining a new format of cooperation” between the two militaries. It gave no details of that arrangement.
Asrian and Singh already met in New Delhi in April this year. During that trip the top Armenian general also held separate talks with General Anil Chauhan, the chief of the Indian Defense Staff.
Armenia - Indian-made Akash air-defense systems are demonstrated during a military parade in Yerevan, May 28, 2026.
India has been one of Armenia’s leading arms suppliers since the 2020 war in Nagorno-Karabakh war during which its arch-foe Pakistan strongly supported Azerbaijan. Armenia has purchased Indian surface-to-air missiles, multiple-launch rocket systems, howitzers and anti-drone equipment worth hundreds of millions of dollars.
Chauhan inspected some of those weapons when he visited the South Caucasus country in February. The Armenian army demonstrated them during a military parade in Yerevan in May.
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.