Azerbaijan's rising defense spending deepens military imbalance with Armenia, MP says

A widening military imbalance between Armenia and Azerbaijan is giving Baku a growing set of tools to exert pressure on Yerevan, Armenian opposition lawmaker Tigran Abrahamyan said on Monday, pointing to sharply diverging defense budgets in the two countries.

Abrahamyan, who represents the Pativ Unem faction, said Azerbaijan’s military budget for 2026 had increased by around 44% compared with the previous year, while Armenia had reduced its own defense spending by approximately 15–16% over the same period.

“Can anyone guess why Azerbaijan’s 2026 military budget has grown by about 44% year on year?” he wrote on Facebook, adding that the trend had been documented in a report by Armenia’s Foreign Intelligence Service.

He criticised the Armenian government for the lack of adequate response, citing not only the reduction in defense spending, but also the mandatory military service cut and other measures he said were ill-suited to the current security environment.

Abrahamyan said he was not claiming that war was inevitable in the near term, but warned that the already disrupted military balance between the two countries was continuing to deteriorate.

“At a minimum, it must be stated that the deepening imbalance provides Baku with a vast toolkit of direct and indirect pressure on Armenia,” he said.