Even as the outcome of the world war hung in doubt, tsarist officials were thinking about the postwar challenges that Eastern Anatolia would pose to their empire's security. They had entered the war without firm plans for the region, and the advance of the Russian army only complicated matters. Some voices advocated taking formal possession of the fruits of war. The Naval Ministry coveted Trabzon and the Black Sea coast. Others, especially the energetic minister of agriculture Krivoshein, advocated colonizing Eastern Anatolia with Cossacks and Russians. Despite the appeal of annexation, up until 1916 Russia's official position on Eastern Anatolia remained that after the war the land would revert to nominal Ottoman control, albeit with enhanced Russian supervision of the region's administration. Senior tsarist officials were cool to the idea of annexing Eastern Anatolia because they regarded the Armenians as “the most difficult” of the heterogeneous populations they had to rule. The tsar's ministers believed an Armenia would only “become a burden” and a “future source of various complications,” and regretted that some circles abroad believed that the creation of an Armenia was a Russian war aim. Indeed, they feared that Russia might inadvertently bring an Armenian state into existence.

When British and French officials presented to Petrograd their proposal for partitioning the Ottoman empire, the so-called Sykes–Picot plan, the Russians initially found it unacceptable because it assigned to France territory from the Levant as far north as Diyar-ı Bekir and Lake Urmia, i.e., abutting the Russian empire.