Its draft state budget approved during a cabinet meeting in Yerevan calls for 563 billion drams ($1.47 billion) in funding for Armenia’s armed forces, down from 665 billion drams allocated for this year. The proposed reduction, which is bound to be denounced by the Armenian opposition, contrasts with a 5 percent increase in overall public spending in 2026 projected at 3.6 trillion drams ($9.5 billion).
Armenia’s defense spending has risen steadily and significantly since the 2020 war in Nagorno-Karabakh. The Armenian military appears to have used the bulk of the increased funding for replenishing its arms stocks diminished during the disastrous war.
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 on August 8. Pashinian has since repeatedly claimed that that put an end to the Armenian-Azerbaijani conflict.
His domestic critics counter that Aliyev did not drop his preconditions for signing the treaty. They also say that even if the peace deal is signed it will not preclude further Azerbaijani military attacks on Armenia.
Aliyev implicitly warned on August 22 of the possibility of such military action and vowed to continue to reinforce Azerbaijan’s armed forces. Baku plans to spend a total of about $5 billion on defense and national security this year.
In what the critics see as another blow to national defense, the Armenian Defense Ministry drafted earlier this month legislation that would shorten compulsory military service in the country from two years to 18 months. The measure, if approved by the parliament, will likely downsize Armenia’s conscription-based army which is already grappling with recruitment problems.
Pashinian declared on September 15 that the army must be the least important tool for ensuring the country’s security. In that context, he again pointed to the agreements reached in Washington.
Armenian opposition leaders maintain that those agreements are based on unilateral Armenian concessions, will not bring real peace and will on the contrary encourage Baku to demand even more from Yerevan. They say that Pashinian is putting Armenia’s very survival at the mercy of Azerbaijan as well as Turkey, instead of rebuilding the army, repairing relations with Russia and forging military ties with Iran.
Senior Azerbaijani officials have repeatedly stated that Armenia’s “militarization” is one of the obstacles to peace between the two countries. One of them called last year for “restrictions” to be placed on the Armenian armed forces.