When on April 1, Armenia’s Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan met Vladimir Putin in the Russian capital, the Armenian leader’s agenda was clear — to bolster his difficult position before the June parliamentary elections.
It did not go smoothly.
The Russian side used the opportunity to present an ultimatum to Yerevan and to broadcast the videoed exchange — choose us, Putin told Pashinyan, or choose the European Union (EU). You cannot choose both.
The Russian logic is clear — one cannot be a member state in mutually exclusive supranational economic entities such as the EU and the Russian-dominated Eurasian Economic Union (EAEU).
Russia is “absolutely calm” about Armenia’s efforts to forge closer ties with the EU, Putin said. While Pashinyan agreed that his country could not straddle both blocs indefinitely, he would have understood the menacing underlying message. Russia does not like the countries of what it terms the near-abroad to look wistfully westward. That was one key reason why the Kremlin invaded Ukraine, after all.
The discussion moved on to other sensitive issues, including another Russian-run grouping, the Collective Security Treaty Organization (CSTO), a six-member alliance that’s a low-fat version of NATO.
Armenia has not forgotten or forgiven Russia’s dismissal of its appeals for help during and after the second Nagorno-Karabakh war of 2020 with non-CSTO member Azerbaijan. The Russian president said action had been impossible given that the region belonged to Azerbaijan, and that Armenia’s internationally recognized territory remained largely intact.
The 20-minute filmed exchange then moved on to far more abstract topics such as democracy and internet freedom in Armenia. The Russian president seemed uninterested and slightly irritated to hear Pashinyan’s digression, including comments on freedom that would be construed as critical of Russian authoritarianism.
Neither side can regard the exchanges as very helpful. Indeed, it seemed the meeting highlighted mutual distrust between the two long-time allies. Tensions have grown in intensity over the past year or so, when preparations for the June 7 parliamentary elections began. Pro-government Armenian politicians have consistently hinted that Russia has been working behind the scenes to deepen and exploit relations between the administration and the Armenian church.
Relatedly, Russia wants its ally, Russian-Armenian billionaire Samvel Karapetyan, to run as a potential candidate with the Strong Armenia party. The country’s leadership countered by launching an investigation against Karapetyan, placing him under house arrest. On that matter, Pashinyan told the Russian leader that “only citizens holding an Armenian passport — and no other nationality — can run in these elections”. Karapetyan says he has been stripped of his Russian nationality.
Russia sees an opportunity in Armenia. The upcoming elections present a perfect opportunity to solve what it sees as the Pashinyan problem. The 50-year-old former journalist came to power in 2018 via a peaceful revolution that was not explicitly anti-Russian but which looked to the Kremlin awfully like the so-called color revolutions that swept many sympathetic regimes in neighboring states.
Pashinyan suffers low popularity, and the Kremlin now hopes to advance its allies, which mostly feature politicians from the pre-2018 period.
Armenia has few options to counter Russian pressure. But it does have the option of withdrawal from CSTO and the EAEU, and made some signals indicating that after the Moscow meeting.
Yet the room for maneuver is tight, and Putin has already acted on his threat. Soon after the summit, Moscow announced tighter requirements for Armenian imports. The agricultural watchdog, Rosselkhoznadzor, argued that a large part of Armenian exports might not meet EAEU sanitary requirements. Russia can also use other tested weapons in its well-used coercive armory — for example, it sells gas to Armenia at a much lower price than EU levels.
Armenia’s options are limited. It’s true that the country has lately improved its ties with Turkey and Azerbaijan. Talks on reopening the long-closed border with Turkey, as well as transit through Azerbaijan underway, with some tangible results already in place. Moreover, Azeri rhetoric toward Armenia has markedly softened, and there seems to be a genuine hope for a long-term peace to be enshrined in a peace document. Both sides are also cooperating on the Trump Route planned to pass through Armenia’s southernmost region of Syunik.
Yet, this does not guarantee Armenia’s long-term security. With Iran in flames and with Azerbaijan and Turkey becoming ever closer militarily, the regional balance of power does not favor the Armenian state. Russia remains a critical component in Yerevan’s security calculus.
Then there is the EU, which has, over the two years, expanded its engagement with Yerevan but still has little to offer in terms of concrete steps that would open the door to Armenian membership. Any such prospect seems far off in the future, despite consistent French support for the country.
The Pashinyan-Putin exchanges illustrated Russia’s keen understanding of Armenia’s dilemmas and difficulties. And that its efforts to walk a narrow line between competing blocs, of playing one side against the other, has its limits.
Yerevan is increasingly facing a Russia that is more demanding, willing to issue ultimatums and to employ its well-thumbed encyclopedia of coercion to raise pressure in the run-up to the parliamentary vote. Yerevan has few options to resist.
Emil Avdaliani is a research fellow at the Turan Research Center and a professor of international relations at the European University in Tbilisi, Georgia. His research focuses on the history of silk roads and the interests of great powers in the Middle East and the Caucasus.
Europe’s Edge is CEPA’s online journal covering critical topics on the foreign policy docket across Europe and North America. All opinions expressed on Europe’s Edge are those of the author alone and may not represent those of the institutions they represent or the Center for European Policy Analysis. CEPA maintains a strict intellectual independence policy across all its projects and publications.
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