Armenians look set to endorse an aspiration to join the EU when they elect a new parliament on Sunday. Moscow has other ideas.
Armenia looks West
When Vladimir Putin called Armenia’s prime minister Nikol Pashinyan on Monday to wish him a happy birthday, he accompanied his greeting with a blunt demand. He said Pashinyan should call a referendum immediately to determine whether Armenians wanted to leave the Russian-led Eurasian Economic Union (EAEU) in order to join the European Union.
Armenia’s foreign policy direction has become a major issue in advance of Sunday’s parliamentary elections, which polls suggest will deliver a comfortable majority to the prime minister’s Civil Contract party. With none of the three main opposition parties polling above 12 per cent, Pashinyan could be on course to win a two-thirds majority that would allow him to initiate constitutional change.
Pashinyan rejected Putin’s demand as unreasonable, saying he would continue to work within the EAEU until a choice between the Russian-led bloc and the EU became unavoidable. And he pointed out that Armenia has not yet applied for candidate status, making EU membership a distant and uncertain prospect.
“Putting a theoretical choice to a referendum is, of course, neither very sensible nor justified,” he said.
Pashinyan is presenting himself as the candidate of peace, urging Armenians to accept the loss of the disputed enclave Nagorno-Karabakh following Azerbaijan’s comprehensive military victory in 2023. When Armenian forces lost control of the territory they had held since the 1990s, the entire ethnic Armenian population of about 100,000 fled.
The decisive nature of the defeat has opened up opportunities for Armenia to normalise relations with Azerbaijan and Turkey, which last month eased restrictions on trade with Yerevan. Donald Trump hosted Pashinyan and Azerbaijani president Ilham Aliyev at the White House last year to announce an agreement to create a transport corridor linking the Azerbaijani exclave of Nakchivan to the rest of the country via southern Armenia.
Called the Trump Route for International Peace and Prosperity (Tripp) it will combine road, rail and pipelines in an effort to link the economies of Armenia, Azerbaijan and Turkey. Trump has endorsed Pashinyan in advance of Sunday’s election and Baku and Ankara also hope the prime minister will prevail, although they are keeping quiet about their support.
A two-thirds majority would allow Pashinyan to call a referendum that would remove the last remaining obstacle in the way of full normalisation of relations with Azerbaijan. Baku wants Armenia to change its constitution to remove part of a preamble that calls for reunification with Nagorno-Karabakh.
The EU has made no secret of its enthusiasm for a Pashinyan victory, sending a team to Yerevan to advise his government on how to counter what it says are Russian influence operations. Britain has also sent advisers while France and the United States have offered physical security to the prime minister.
But Russia has leverage too because it buys 25 per cent of Armenia’s exports and supplies 80 per cent of its gas. And at an EAEU summit in Astana last month, Putin drew a grim parallel between Armenia’s European ambitions and those of Ukraine.
“I have already mentioned this. The crisis in Ukraine began with attempts by Ukraine to join the EU. We were not against it back then,” he said
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