The secretary of Russia’s Security Council, Sergei Shoigu, accused Armenia’s leadership of systematically taking hostile steps against Moscow when he met with other Russian officials on Wednesday to discuss the future of relations between the two countries.
“We fully understand the Armenian leadership’s desire to continue to draw economic benefits from relations with our country,” Shoigu said at the start of a meeting of the council’s “special working group.” “However, cooperation and strategic partnership are a two-way street. Therefore, I propose now discussing the further development of cooperation with Armenia in the political, economic and security spheres.”
“It is no secret that the leadership of that country has taken a number of steps of late that do not correspond to the spirit of allied relations with the Russian Federation,” he said, according to the TASS news agency.
In particular, Shoigu rebuked the Armenian government for seeking to join the European Union and accused it of increasingly siding with the EU against Russia on the international stage. He also blasted it for allowing Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelenskyy to attend a recent European Political Community summit in Yerevan and implicitly threaten to disrupt the annual Victory Day parade in Moscow with drone strikes.
Shoigu went on to list other “unfriendly” steps taken by Prime Minister Nikol Pashinian’s administration. Those include Yerevan’s ratification of the founding treaty of the International Criminal Court (ICC), which issued an arrest warrant for Russian President Vladimir Putin in 2023, extradition of Russian citizens to third countries and what he called efforts to drive Russian companies out of Armenia.
The Russian task force did not report any decisions right after the meeting that highlighted the latest upsurge in Russian-Armenian tensions. It came just over a week before a Eurasian Economic Union (EEU) summit in Kazakhstan during which Putin is expected to discuss Armenia’s continued membership of the Russian-led trade bloc. Putin and other Russian officials have said in recent weeks that it is not compatible with Yerevan’s European integration drive.
Pashinian has decided to boycott the summit. His foreign minister, Ararat Mirzoyan, told RFE/RL’s Armenian Service on Wednesday that Armenia cannot be forced to quit the EEU which guarantees its exporters’ tariff-free access to the Russian market.
According to TASS, Shoigu spent much of his extensive opening remarks detailing the South Caucasus nation’s heavy economic dependence on Russia.
“Cooperation with Russia is the main driver of the Armenian economy,” declared the Russian security chief. “It’s difficult to dispute this fact.”
“I wonder in what quantities and under what conditions Armenian apricots, trout and mineral water will be supplied to the European Union,” he said, hinting at retaliatory measures against Armenian exporters.
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