Russia has dismissed Prime Minister Nikol Pashinian’s claims that its recent bans on agricultural imports from Armenia have left the Eurasian Economic Union (EEU) “paralyzed” and said Yerevan would pay a heavy price for its exit from the Russian-led bloc.
Pashinian claimed on Wednesday that Moscow’s failure to lift the bans soon would mark “the beginning of the EEU’s end.” He said the next day that he will raise the matter with the prime ministers of Russia and other EEU member states during a meeting next week.
“And if this issue is not resolved quickly, I am 100 percent sure that Armenia will overcome this problem while the EEU will not,” he added said without elaborating.
“From an economic point of view, the thesis that without Armenia there will be no EEU is, to put it mildly, an exaggeration,” Russian Minister for Economic Development Maksim Reshetnikov countered later on Thursday.
Speaking to journalists, Reshetnikov argued that Armenia accounts for less than 1 percent of Russia’s foreign trade. By comparison, Russia’s share in Armenian foreign trade stood at 28 percent in the first months of this year.
“It will not be difficult for us to replace Armenian supplies,” Reshetnikov said, according to the TASS news agency.
Citing “expert estimates,” he said that a loss of the tariff-free access to the Russian market would cause Armenian exports to Russia, which reached $3 billion last year, to shrink by more than half. Moscow, he warned, will also stop “subsidizing” the price of Russian natural gas for Armenia if the South Caucasus nation leaves the EEU to continue seeking membership of the European Union.
“Russia supplies gas to Armenia at a price of $177.5 per thousand cubic meters. And if you compare this price with current ‘European’ gas prices exceeding $600 per thousand cubic meters, it can’t be called anything other than a subsidy,” added Reshetnikov.
The minister’s remarks came just hours after Passhinian vowed to end the Russian Railways (RZhD) monopoly’s management of Armenia’s railway network. The Armenian government may take RZhD to international court for that purpose, said the Armenian premier.
The RZhD chairman, Oleg Belozerov, responded by saying that Yerevan would have to compensate his company for about $400 million in investments its claims to have made in the network since 2009. Reshetnikov also warned of such compensation.
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