VIDEO: When, How, and Thanks to Whom the Military Balance Between Armenia and Azerbaijan Was Disrupted

There is much discussion among the public regarding the previously disrupted military balance between Azerbaijan and Armenia, which ultimately led to our defeat in the 44-day war. This is reported by infoport.am.

In this context, discussions also revolve around the multi-billion dollar arms deals signed between Russia and Azerbaijan, as well as the severe restrictions on the quantity of weapons and ammunition supplied to Armenia, as recently mentioned by Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan in Parliament.

Now, let us delve into this statement in more detail, trying to understand the disruption of military balance between Armenia and Azerbaijan with concrete factual data.

According to the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI), the share of Russian weapons in Azerbaijan's total defense imports in 2007-2008 was about 22%. The remaining percentage was mainly divided among Israel, Turkey, Belarus, and Ukraine. According to the institute’s report in 2017, Azerbaijan was included in the list of the 40 largest arms importers in the world, ranking 21st. Its main suppliers were Russia (69%), Israel (22%), and Belarus (3.6%).

In January 2017, Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev announced in Davos about the huge military equipment purchased from Russia, noting that Baku was negotiating with Moscow over the supply of new armaments and was interested in cutting-edge defense systems. Aliyev stated that contracts worth nearly $5 billion had been signed with Russia, most of which had already been implemented. He also mentioned this during a joint press conference with Russian President Vladimir Putin on September 1, 2018, stating that the contracts for the supply of weapons from Russia to Azerbaijan were estimated at $5 billion and that this figure continues to grow.

This means that Azerbaijan has spent approximately $12-15 billion on weapons over a period of 10-12 years. Since then, those figures have only increased. Over the past 15 years, Azerbaijan has spent around $17-18 billion on armaments, which is incomparably more than the expenditure on armaments by Armenia.

It turns out that Azerbaijan began the process of acquiring advanced weaponry in 2007, while Armenia lagged behind and only initiated this process in 2014, and not at the pace with which Azerbaijan acquired its weapons.

For more details, watch the video.