Armenia Relations with Russia Reach Crisis Point, Continuing Worrying Trend for Moscow

The slow-motion train wreck taking place in Armenia is starting to pick up speed. Let’s deal with the latest before turning to why this is a disaster for Armenia, a major irritant for Moscow that fits into a larger, much more concerning pattern, and where it might go from here.

At the beginning of April, Moscow announced stricter requirements on the import of Armenian products. The move came a day after Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan and Russian President Vladimir Putin had a not-so-friendly chat in Moscow as Russia is upset over a wide range of Armenian moves, such as training with US troops and replacing Moscow in agreed-upon corridor projects with the Americans.

At that meeting Putin reiterated the impossibility of being in a customs union with the EU and the Eurasian Economic Union simultaneously. The message was clear: the path Armenia has chosen toward the EU also leads straight out of the EAEU.

Shockingly, Armenia’s response is more of a threat to itself than anyone else. Regarding Moscow’s stricter requirements on imports, Armenian Parliamentary Speaker Alen Simonyan said the following:

“If they make such a decision, Armenia will also make its own decision and will withdraw once and for all from the CSTO [Collective Security Treaty Organization, a military alliance between Armenia, Belarus, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Russia, and Tajikistan] and the EAEU, and from the remaining structures as well.”

If this is all sounding somewhat familiar, recall that it was the choice between pursuing membership in the EAEU or EU that helped lead to the US-backed Euromaidan “protests” in Ukraine and all that has followed.

Armenian Economy Minister Gevorg Papoyan expressed confidence that Russia will back down because “Armenia is needed by its partners so that it remains both in the CSTO and in the EAEU. If Armenia is not supposed to receive those benefits, then why should it remain in that union? A process of joining another union will begin, and it will happen in a more accelerated manner.”

It’s not clear that’s really true, though. Sure, the EU launched a four-year 270 million Euro fund to help “bring Armenia into the Western fold,” and US Vice President JD Vance recently stopped by Armenia to offer up drones and replacing Russian nuclear energy with unproven American options, but all that is a far cry from what Armenia currently enjoys with Moscow, and it’s not clear the US-EU are going to come riding to rescue.

Disaster for Armenia

Naturally, Moscow is not thrilled about a country in its backyard with which it enjoys historical ties inviting in the Americans and pursuing membership in the EU, which is mostly united these days by a hatred and fear of Russia.

Pashinyan in his meeting with Putin declared the following self-evident proposition: “when the processes reach the point where it will be necessary to make a decision, I am sure that we, I mean the citizens of the Republic of Armenia, will make that decision.” 

Fair enough. Armenians will have a say in the matter come June when parliamentary elections are held in a contest largely shaping up to be a referendum on which direction the country should take. The economic case favors Moscow.

As Fitch Ratings notes, Armenia’s economy relies significantly on Russia for both trade and energy. For example:

• Russia is Armenia’s number one trading partner with about 40% of Armenian exports going to Russia.
• More than 60% of Armenia’s natural gas supplies come from Russia. Armenia also currently pays Russia $165 per thousand cubic meters of gas, well below the market price in Europe.
• Upwards of 7% per cent of Armenia’s GDP comes from remittances from Armenian migrants working in Russia.

Yet it moves forward with the hope that the EU will rescue it. Why? Well, it should be noted that Armenia is crawling with Western NGOs, which pump enormous amounts of money into the country while pushing anti-Russian propaganda. And then there are reports that British gambling money is being funneled to Armenia and to the prime minister and his friends as an added incentive to sway them in a geopolitical direction. There are also allegations that funds from the French Development Agency (AFD) and the Coordination Council of Armenian Organisations of France (CCAF) are being used for politicians’ personal benefit, including Pashinyan’s purchase of a three million euro villa near Marseille. The actions of the Pashinyan government would make far more sense in this case.

To be fair, it always made sense for Armenia to try to broaden its international ties beyond dependence on Russia, and it has begun to do so—yet in a clumsy fashion that torpedoes its most important relationship. Turkey and Armenia recently agreed to allow direct bilateral land trade via Georgia, meaning intermediary companies will no longer need to reclassify Turkish goods as separate exports upon entering Georgia. Reopening the land border between Türkiye and Armenia might not be that far off. And Armenia recently began importing energy from Azerbaijan. Both are encouraging signs that the decades-long freeze between the countries is beginning to thaw (others are fearful that it is part of a stealth takeover of Armenia by Turkey and Azerbaijan) but the economic relationship has a long ways to go to match what Armenia and Russia have built over decades.

A sober weighing of the EAEU vs. the EU would likely see the former win in a landslide. That’s why there’s been a years-long effort to tarnish Russia’s image in Armenia. Some brief background.

In the 2020 war in which Armenia was outmatched by Azerbaijan, the peace was brokered by Russia, and Moscow. When Pashinyan complains about the CSTO not fulfilling its objectives for Armenia he is referring to article 4 of the Collective Security Treaty, which establishes that an aggression against one signatory would be perceived as an aggression against all. In Pashinyan’s view Moscow should have gone to war with Azerbaijan—with which it enjoyed close ties, although those too have frayed— rather than only working to restrain Baku. Russia sent 2,000 peacekeepers and began attempting to work with both sides to implement parts of that agreement and resolve the Nagorno Karabakh issue in ways that would preserve Moscow’s dominant role in the region. Instead both Armenia and Azerbaijan have turned to varying extents on Russia as they look west and embrace the Trump Route for International Peace and Prosperity (TRIPP), a 43-kilometer (27 miles) corridor across southern Armenia that would connect Azerbaijan to its autonomous Nakhchivan exclave bordered by Armenia, Türkiye, and Iran.

In fairness to Moscow, conventional wisdom was that there was little need for Russia to intervene forcefully on behalf of Armenia because Yerevan lacked alternatives and relied on Moscow to prevent it from being overrun by its neighbors Azerbaijan and Türkiye. Ironically, that likely was the case in the 2020 war. Nonetheless, the Pashinyan government defied all logic when it began to turn West.

A crucial point is that it was under the guidance of the West that Armenia’s “loss” of the disputed Nagorno Karabakh region occurred.

Against the backdrop of the Ukrainian war and the new Cold War, Western countries began to compete with Moscow for the status of the main moderator of the Armenia-Azerbaijan negotiations. Yerevan began to favor the West, and talks mostly moved to Western platforms. It was during those meetings that Armenia agreed to officially recognize Nagorno-Karabakh as part of Azerbaijan.

Once Armenia did so (and PM Pashinyan declared so publicly), the die was cast. The region was (and is) recognized as Azerbaijani territory by the international community but was overwhelmingly populated by ethnic Armenians. Roughly 100,000 of them fled to Armenia after Azerbaijan blockaded the region for months and then moved militarily to assert control in September – an operation that resulted in hundreds of deaths.

Despite moving the negotiation process under the guidance of the West and publicly recognizing Nagorno-Karabakh as Azerbaijani territory, the Armenian government continues to frame it as Moscow’s fault with Pashinyan once again declaring so at his recent meeting with Putin.

While all of this has been happening, there has also been a step-by-step poisoning of ties with Russia from Armenia’s side, including the following:

• Not allowing the head of the Russian Society for Friendship and Cooperation with Armenia into the country.
• A visit by Pashinyan’s wife to Kiev along with a shipment of humanitarian aid, the first sent by Armenia to Ukraine since the outbreak of the war.
• In 2024, Armenia joined the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court. The ICC, which much of the world views as no more than a political tool of the West, has an outstanding arrest warrant for Putin for alleged war crimes in Ukraine. That now means that if Putin were to visit Armenia he should face arrest there, and the Pashinyan government might just be crazy enough to do it. Moscow called the ratification by Yerevan a “hostile act.” It’s certainly interesting timing on Armenia’s part considering the statute came into effect all the way back in 2002.
• Armenia has hosted military exercises with the US for the past few years.
• There have been media reports that Armenia will supply weaponry to Ukraine, although those haven’t been reliably confirmed.
• Armenia “froze” its CSTO participation after Pashinyan met with US Secretary of State Antony Blinken and the head of MI6, Richard Moore, on the sidelines of the Munich Security Conference. Pashinyan’s office released only a brief notice of the gathering without mentioning anything that was discussed, so we can only guess.
• Armenian opposition leader and dual Russian citizen Samvel Karapetyan has been jailed and his electric company nationalized.
• Taking the Russian keys to the southern Armenia corridor and handing them to Washington (the route is now named after Trump). Russia had designs on a controlling stake in such a corridor, with a point from the peace agreement between Armenia and Azerbaijan specifically calling for Russian involvement in such a route. Instead Washington and Yerevan have a deal  for the US to hold a 74 percent stake in corridor infrastructure for fifty years, before dropping to a 51 percent stake.Not only does this upset Moscow’s plans for more trade connectivity, but TRIPP will cut Iran out of its role as a go-around between Azerbaijan and its exclave—and Türkiye. From Tehran’s perspective TRIPP looks a lot more like an effort to sever its land border with Armenia—and with it, a land route to Russia—further encircle the country and bring hostile actors to its border, and march US/Turkish/NATO influence across the Caucasus to the Caspian—and potentially beyond into Central Asia.

One of the latest disagreements is over Armenia’s railways, which is currently under Russian management as part of a 30-year concession agreement signed in 2008.

The Pashinyan government is now convinced this means a loss of ‘competitive advantage’ and is floating the idea of having a country with ‘friendly relations’ with both Russia and Armenia ‘purchase the concession management rights. Pashinyan has mentioned Kazakhstan, which is now building NATO-standard shell factories, as a strong fit. Moscow is unenthused.

The View from Russia

Elite opinions vary between two extremes. One is outright dismissal. Armenia is overplaying its hand in such fashion that Russian Foreign Ministry spokesperson Maria Zakharova recently burst into laughter at one of her daily briefings in response to a question on the matter.

Yet when taken together with other events in the South Caucasus and Central Asia, it’s less of a laughing matter for Moscow. In response to a Timofei Bordachev piece dismissing Western threats along Russia’s southern periphery, Andrew Korybko points out how at the moment the threat might seem small, but it has the potential to balloon on Moscow:

TRIPP represents an economic corridor with dual military purposes for expanding Western influence along Russia’s entire southern periphery. More Central Asian trade with the West can lead to the creation of new elites and the co-opting of incumbent ones, and where trade goes, political and then military ties can easily follow.

Bordachev claims that “Russia’s principal adversaries either lack sufficiently important interests or are simply incapable of maintaining a physical presence that Moscow could consider a threat to its security interests.” That’s disproven by Kazakhstan’s announcement last December that it’ll begin producing NATO-standard shells, the implications of which were analyzed here, the most important being that Kazakhstan might soon follow Azerbaijan’s lead in having its armed forces conform to NATO standards.

The creeping pace at which this might progress could deter Russia from preemptively thwarting it out of concern that whatever response it might ultimately employ could be spun as an “overreaction” and thus further accelerate this process if it fails to resolve the issue. It’s already troubling enough that there’s one NATO-standardized army on its southern periphery, which is also allied with NATO member Turkiye, but having another one along what’s the longest land border in the world would be even more troubling.