MOSCOW—Russia on Saturday defended its policy of selling arms to both Armenia and Azerbaijan, whose military forces have faced off in a sharp escalation of fighting around separatist Nagorno-Karabakh.
Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev said if Russia stopped selling arms, both countries would simply seek new suppliers.
“They would buy weapons in other countries, and the degree of their deadliness wouldn’t change,” he told Russian state television following visits to the capitals of Armenia and Azerbaijan. “But at the same time, this could to a certain degree destroy the balance” of forces that exists in the South Caucasus region.
Both Azerbaijani and Armenian forces this month have used artillery, tanks and other weapons on a scale not seen since a separatist war ended in 1994. The war left Karabakh, officially part of Azerbaijan, under the control of local ethnic Armenian forces and the Armenian military.
