Taking advantage of its cordial ties with Iran, India is sending the Pinaka Multi-Barrel Rocket Launcher System (MBRLS) to Armenia through the West Asian nation. Baku has made such a claim, saying that Armenia is using this deadly weapon against Azerbaijan.

Azerbaijan has further said that New Delhi, by providing Yerevan with its first indigenously designed and developed MBRLS, is destabilising the Caucasus Region. Baku believes that India is actually trying to fill the void created by Russia’s preoccupation with the Ukraine War. Caliber.az, an Azerbaijani web portal, recently published an article on this issue.

The portal has embedded a video, showing trucks, loaded with military cargo, heading towards Armenia from Iran’s Bandar Abbas Port. Foreign Policy commentator Toghrul Mammadli has stressed: “India has been pumping weapons and military equipment to Armenia through Iran. Unfortunately, India turns a blind eye to the fact that this runs counter to the principles of the Bandung Conference and the Non-Aligned Movement (NAM), of which India is also a member.”

Caliber.az has reported that Hikmet Hajiyev, the Assistant to the President of the Republic of Azerbaijan and Head of the Foreign Policy Department of the Presidential Administration, recently met Indian diplomat Sridharan Madhusudhanan to discuss the issue. During their meeting, Hajiyev expressed serious concern over the expanding military cooperation between India and Armenia, stating that the weapons were being supplied even as the two countries were engaged in war.

Earlier in January 2023, President of Azerbaijan Ilham Aliyev had called India’s supply of weapons to adversary Armenia an unfriendly move, stating: “If we are facing a serious threat, we will deal with that threat immediately, regardless of where that threat arises, within our territory or outside our borders. It is our legitimate right to do so.”

The EurAsian Times has reported that the Pinaka system is considered at par with the US HIMARS. The Defence Research and Development Organisation (DRDO) of India developed this system as a replacement for the Russian GRAD BM-21, which also equips the Armenian Armed Forces. Armenia is using the Pinaka system against Azerbaijan’s drones, including suicide drones. The MBRLS not only has the ability to survive in a drone-saturated battlefield, but also to shoot the target and then disappear quickly. Pinaka support vehicles also have matching mobility and logistics commonalities. India has deployed this multiple rocket launcher along its borders with China and Pakistan.

It may be noted that Armenia and Azerbaijan engaged in an armed conflict on September 27, 2020 over the disputed region of Nagorno-Karabakh. Since the fall of the erstwhile Soviet Union, Nagorno-Karabakh and surrounding regions have been experiencing periodic outbursts of violence. Although Armenia and Azerbaijan signed a cease-fire agreement in 1994, it failed to ensure peace in the region.

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Published by Koushik Das

Koushik Das (born on May 16, 1976 in Kolkata) is a career journalist. Based in the Indian capital of New Delhi, Koushik writes mainly about foreign policies and current geopolitical issues, and rarely about other topics. His own political ideas are highly influenced by Antonio Gramsci, Louis Althusser, Michel Foucault, Michael Oakeshott and others. English philosopher and political theorist Oakeshott (Dec 11, 1901-Dec 19, 1990) says that “in political activity, men sail a boundless and bottomless sea. There is neither harbour for shelter nor floor for anchorage, neither starting-place, nor appointed destination. But we have to keep afloat”. (Rationalism in Politics, 1962) As a student of Political Science, Koushik loves to share his views on issues, which have great impacts on his thought process (and also on India, South Asia and of course on the global community), with his readers through his website – Boundless Ocean of Politics. By doing so, he tries to keep himself afloat. You will find some of his articles in https://inserbia.info/today/ (https://inserbia.info/today/author/kou_das13_i/), as he has been trying to assess the global geopolitics since 2003. You can also mail him at kousdas@gmail.com View all posts by Koushik Das