Russia Slams New EU Mission To Armenia

The two-year mission requested by the Armenian government and approved by EU foreign ministers earlier this week is tasked with helping Yerevan cope with “hybrid threats” emanating from abroad, presumably Russia, before and after the country’s June 7 parliamentary elections.

The Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman, Maria Zakharova, claimed that it will seek to “influence” the election outcome “under the pretext of tracking illicit financial flows and countering cyberattacks, information manipulation and information interference from third countries.”

“A mission that will claim to fight against interference in the affairs of a sovereign state is itself an instrument of such interference,” Zakharova told reporters, according to the TASS news agency.

“We hope that our Armenian allies and friends will not allow the new mission to … draw Yerevan into the West’s geopolitical games which would involve the destruction of friendly ties with our country and joining Brussels’ anti-Russian policy,” she warned.

The EU already decided last month to send a separate “hybrid rapid response team” to Yerevan for the elections. The Armenian government requested the deployment as well after implicitly alleging Russian “hybrid” threats to the integrity of the electoral process. Government officials have not publicly elaborated on those threats.

A similar EU mission was deployed in Moldova ahead of parliamentary elections held there last September. Two Moldovan opposition parties deemed pro-Russian were disqualified from the vote won by the former Soviet republic’s pro-Western leadership. The Russian Foreign Ministry claimed on March 4 that the EU is gearing up for a repeat of “the Moldovan scenario” in Armenia.

Armenia’s leading opposition groups, notably a bloc led by Russian-Armenian billionaire Samvel Karapetian, are concerned that they too could be barred from running in the polls. Russian President Vladimir Putin warned Prime Minister Nikol Pashinian against such bans during their April 1 talks at the Kremlin.

Putin also implied that Armenia will lose its tariff-free access to the Russian market and a significant discount on the price of Russian natural gas imported by it if it keeps seeking to join the EU. Pashinian and his Civil Contract effectively ignored these warnings in their election manifesto published late last week.

Zakharova said the EU has no intention to admit Yerevan in the foreseeable future. The 27-nation bloc is only keen to “turn Armenia into its outpost,” she claimed.

Yerevan is due to host on May 4-5 a first-ever EU-Armenian summit viewed by local analysts as a pre-election show of EU support for Pashinian and his pro-Western foreign policy.

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