By Eurasianet

Takeaways

• Russia Seeks Reconciliation — After failing to undermine Nikol Pashinyan’s reelection, Russian Prime Minister Mikhail Mishustin urged Armenia to reset bilateral relations on a positive footing during Pashinyan’s visit to Yekaterinburg on July 6.
• Russian Conditions — Moscow called for protection of Russian investors’ interests and warned that Armenia’s EAEU membership is incompatible with its EU aspirations, demanding clarity on Yerevan’s geopolitical direction.
• Pashinyan’s Cautious Stance — The Armenian prime minister expressed interest in keeping EAEU mechanisms functional and resolving issues constructively, while keeping options open and avoiding major concessions.

(Eurasianet) — After mounting an unsuccessful campaign to sink Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan’s reelection chances, Russia is now telling him that it is time to bury the hatchet.

Pashinyan traveled to the Siberian city of Yekaterinburg, where on July 6 he met his Russian counterpart, Prime Minister Mikhail Mishustin. After the meeting, Mishustin voiced hope that bilateral relations, which have taken a nosedive in recent years amid Armenia’s geopolitical pivot westwards, can get back on an even keel. 

In effect, Mishustin asked Pashinyan to forget about all the dirty tricks and disinformation that Russia deployed against him during the recent parliamentary election campaign, which nonetheless ended with a decisive victory for the Armenian prime minister’s Civil Contract party. 

“We hope that the new government… will ensure the progressive development of Russian-Armenian relations in the spirit of friendship, good neighborliness, mutual respect and consideration of mutual interests,” the Gazeta.ru news outlet quoted Mishustin as saying.

If Mishustin’s comments were intended as an olive branch, they contained some thorns.

The Armenpress news agency indicated that the Russian prime minister issued a tacit warning to Pashinyan, calling on Yerevan to “maintain a favorable environment for Russian investors” and protect their “legitimate interests.” 

Pashinyan’s response was muted, with the clear intent of keeping his options open.

“We are interested in our participation in the Eurasian Economic Union [EAEU], and we are interested in ensuring that the mechanisms envisaged by the EAEU Treaty function as intended,” Armenpress quoted Pashinyan as saying. 

“We are committed to a constructive approach to discussing and clarifying all issues and nuances. I hope that following today’s talks we will be able to resolve specific issues,” he added.

A major source of bilateral friction revolves around Armenia’s EAEU membership, which Russian officials contend is incompatible with Yerevan’s recent efforts to gain European Union membership. Moscow insists that Armenia can’t be a member of both and has called on the Armenian leadership to choose. With EU membership a distant prospect, Pashinyan has said there’s no need to make an immediate choice.

As part of its campaign to undermine Pashinyan’s government during the run-up to the parliamentary election campaign, Russia imposed import bans on a variety of Armenian food products. 

States do not recognize genocides because they have suddenly discovered a moral conscience. They do so when it aligns with their political, strategic, diplomatic, or domestic interests.

The Israeli government’s recognition of the Armenian Genocide has generated mixed reactions in the public sphere around the world and in Armenia itself.

Some have welcomed the decision, while others have argued that a government itself widely accused of committing crimes against humanity in Gaza lacks the moral authority to recognize another people’s genocide, suggesting that Israel is even exploiting the issue for gain. 

While I understand the criticism, it rests on a fundamentally flawed understanding of geopolitics.

States do not recognize genocides because they have suddenly discovered a moral conscience. They do so when it aligns with their political, strategic, diplomatic, or domestic interests.

International relations have never been governed by moral idealism but by realpolitik. If morality were the driving force behind statecraft, genocides would not have occurred in the first place, nor would governments have ignored or enabled them whenever it suited their interests.

The notion that recognition of the Armenian Genocide is – or has ever been – a purely moral act is a comforting illusion.

Most states that have recognized the Armenian Genocide have not done so solely out of moral conviction, without domestic lobbying, geopolitical calculations, electoral considerations, or strategic interests.

Every recognition has taken place within a political context. Israel is no exception, and that does not detract from finally doing the right thing.

It is also important to note that while successive Israeli governments refused to recognize the genocide for decades, it was the Armenian National Committee of Jerusalem (ANCJ), together with several Israeli scholars and public figures and academic organizations such as the Zoryan Institute, that sustained the campaign for recognition. 

They devoted a huge effort to educating Israeli society, lobbying decision-makers, and ensuring that the Armenian Genocide did not disappear from the Israeli national conversation.

Considering that, the Israeli government should, as part of the recognition, also have taken concrete steps to address the terrible conditions faced by the Armenian community in east Jerusalem.

Its several thousand members continue to experience discrimination and harassment from ultra-nationalist Jewish groups. Incidents such as spitting on clergy, verbal abuse, and the desecration of sacred sites have become part of the daily reality for many Armenians.

The climate of impunity surrounding these acts has turned such groups into an existential threat to the Armenian community of Jerusalem.

This raises an important question: recognition without meaningful measures to protect a vulnerable minority is little more than ink on paper. This pattern has been evident in many cases of genocide recognition.

Genocide acknowledgment without a genuine commitment to prevention is ultimately of limited value.

Recognition must go hand-in-hand with action

Israel was directly or indirectly complicit in the ethnic cleansing of the Armenians of Artsakh (known in Israel and elsewhere as Nagorno-Karabakh) through its extensive military cooperation with Azerbaijan. 

Some estimates suggest that Israel supplied approximately 70% of Azerbaijan’s arms imports between 2016 and 2020. Haaretz, for example, reported that 92 Azerbaijani military cargo flights landed at Israel’s Ovda Air Base between 2016 and 2020. 

During this period, Azerbaijan acquired a wide range of Israeli military equipment, including intelligence-gathering drones, Hermes UAVs, Harop loitering munitions (“kamikaze drones”), Spike anti-tank missiles, ATMOS self-propelled artillery systems, Cardom mortars, Barak air defense missiles, Searcher and Heron drones, naval patrol vessels, and Typhoon weapon stations.

Equally troubling is the fact that many states that formally recognized the Armenian Genocide failed to take meaningful measures to prevent the ethnic cleansing of Artsakh.

Despite their official recognition of the genocide of 1915, they did not impose significant sanctions on Azerbaijan or take other effective steps to deter the forced displacement of the Armenian population.

As a result, Armenians were uprooted from their historical homeland in Artsakh and continued to witness the destruction of their cultural heritage in territories they inhabited for centuries, all in full view of states that had previously acknowledged the Armenian Genocide. 

This raises a fundamental question: What is the value of genocide recognition if it is not accompanied by a commitment to prevent similar crimes against vulnerable communities?

Since the 19th century, the Armenian question has too often become a pawn in international politics, with the so-called “civilized world” invoking it selectively to advance geopolitical interests rather than consistently defending the rights and security of the Armenian people.

Recognition, if it is to have genuine moral significance, must be accompanied by concrete action to prevent persecution, protect vulnerable populations, and uphold international law.

The writer was born and raised in the Old City of Jerusalem. A Guggenheim Fellow, he is professor of Modern Middle East history and Hymen Rosenberg Professor in Judaic Studies at the University of Nebraska, Lincoln.

https://www.jpost.com/opinion/article-901437

Neil Hauer

Russia still displeased while grappling with reality.

Jul 7, 2026

After mounting an unsuccessful campaign to sink Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan’s reelection chances, Russia is now telling him that it is time to bury the hatchet.

Pashinyan traveled to the Siberian city of Yekaterinburg, where on July 6 he met his Russian counterpart, Prime Minister Mikhail Mishustin. After the meeting, Mishustin voiced hope that bilateral relations, which have taken a nosedive in recent years amid Armenia’s geopolitical pivot westwards, can get back on an even keel. 

In effect, Mishustin asked Pashinyan to forget about all the dirty tricks and disinformation that Russia deployed against him during the recent parliamentary election campaign, which nonetheless ended with a decisive victory for the Armenian prime minister’s Civil Contract party. 

“We hope that the new government… will ensure the progressive development of Russian-Armenian relations in the spirit of friendship, good neighborliness, mutual respect and consideration of mutual interests,” the Gazeta.ru news outlet quoted Mishustin as saying.

If Mishustin’s comments were intended as an olive branch, they contained some thorns.

The Armenpress news agency indicated that the Russian prime minister issued a tacit warning to Pashinyan, calling on Yerevan to “maintain a favorable environment for Russian investors” and protect their “legitimate interests.” 

Pashinyan’s response was muted, with the clear intent of keeping his options open.

“We are interested in our participation in the Eurasian Economic Union [EAEU], and we are interested in ensuring that the mechanisms envisaged by the EAEU Treaty function as intended,” Armenpress quoted Pashinyan as saying. 

“We are committed to a constructive approach to discussing and clarifying all issues and nuances. I hope that following today’s talks we will be able to resolve specific issues,” he added.

A major source of bilateral friction revolves around Armenia’s EAEU membership, which Russian officials contend is incompatible with Yerevan’s recent efforts to gain European Union membership. Moscow insists that Armenia can’t be a member of both and has called on the Armenian leadership to choose. With EU membership a distant prospect, Pashinyan has said there’s no need to make an immediate choice.

As part of its campaign to undermine Pashinyan’s government during the run-up to the parliamentary election campaign, Russia imposed import bans on a variety of Armenian food products. 

https://eurasianet.org/pashinyan-travels-to-russia-searches-for-solid-ground-for-armenian-russian-relations

Last month, a critical geopolitical contest took place in the South Caucasus, when voters in Armenia went to the polls to appoint a new government. The June 7th parliamentary election was about far more than the composition of that country’s legislature. Rather, it constituted a referendum of sorts on its economic and political future.

For most of the post-Cold War era, Armenia had stayed deeply dependent on Russia, both politically and strategically. But over the past several years, under Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan’s leadership, it has undertaken a more independent, sovereign course. This has included a long-overdue mending of fences with regional rival Azerbaijan, involvement in critical connectivity projects like the “Trump Route for International Peace and Prosperity” (TRIPP) and the Middle Corridor, and deepening ties with both Europe and the United States.

These shifts have drawn Yerevan closer to the West. They have also challenged the influence of Russia and China, both of which have sought in recent years to dominate and direct Eurasian connectivity and trade.

All that helps explain the extraordinary scale of Russia’s efforts to undermine the June vote. Investigations and leaked documents have exposed a broad, coordinated attempt by Moscow to manipulate the Armenian election via information warfare and propaganda. It also weaponized a network of Russian-Armenian oligarchs – whose fortunes are tied to the Russian-dominated regional system – to try and reshape the country’s political landscape. (Most prominently, this has included Samvel Karapetyan, a construction and real estate magnate with close ties to Russian business and politics, who positioned himself as a leader of the anti-Pashinyan opposition despite lacking the constitutional standing to do so on account of his dual Armenian-Russian citizenship.)

The objective was clear: not simply to oust Prime Minister Pashinyan, but to reverse the broader reorientation that the country has pursued in recent years under his guidance. To no avail, however. Pashinyan’s “Civil Contract” Party persevered in the polls, securing a renewed mandate to continue its political course. The question now becomes how best to do so.

Here, Armenia’s constitution should naturally take center stage. In its present form, the country’s foundational document still rests on language that incorporates territorial claims to Azerbaijani land – specifically, a Declaration of independence that references the priority of Armenia’s reunification with the enclave of Karabakh, which is internationally recognized as territory belonging to Baku.

Notably, Pashinyan himself doesn’t seem to hold to this formulation, and the August 2025 framework deal he signed in Washington with Azerbaijan’s President, Ilham Aliyev, codifies an end to the broader conflict between the two countries. But that document alone can’t obviate constitutional provisions a future government might invoke to return to an earlier status quo that’s more favorable to Moscow (and by extension Beijing), and adversarial to everyone else.

Logically, then, the next phase to lock in Armenia’s evolution is a constitutional referendum that resets the terms of its foreign policy, including abandoning claims to territory that have already been settled. One is now being considered for the 2027 timeframe, and the stakes promise to be high. Moreover, passage of such a new compact is far from assured, particularly if the country’s nationalist opposition manages to mobilize effectively.

As long as Armenia’s constitution is still based on territorial claims that conflict with its neighbors, Yerevan’s recent strategic gains can still be reversed. Without that change, the current peace in the South Caucasus might last only as long as the current government remains in power in Yerevan. The United States and Armenia’s allies in the West have a stake in it lasting much longer.