Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine fundamentally changed Armenia’s position. In 2021−2022, as the future of Nagorno-Karabakh hung in the balance, Moscow — already deeply committed to the war — was in no position to offer Yerevan meaningful support. Even arms deliveries were effectively suspended. Faced with this reality, Armenia had little choice but to execute a strategic pivot: abandon Karabakh and pursue simultaneous rapprochement with Baku, Ankara, and the European Union. Every subsequent sharp statement and move from Yerevan has flowed from that basic decision.
Moscow now faces a formal ally that openly declares a European course, hosts Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky in its capital, and asks Russia to scale back its economic footprint so that trade with Europe can proceed more smoothly.
By 2026, Moscow appears to have concluded that its old approach — simply ignoring allies’ disloyalty — no longer works and must be revised. Among the options under discussion are the demonstrative withdrawal of economic preferences (a tool used before) and even expulsion from integration structures (something that has not been done previously).
The Armenian Premise
Relations between Moscow and Yerevan after 2018 resembled a kind of controlled experiment. Having already launched the war in eastern Ukraine and annexed Crimea, the Kremlin decided to test a different playbook in a comparable situation. The Velvet Revolution in Armenia was not a full replica of Euromaidan. Nikol Pashinyan did not initially declare an intention to sever ties with Russia. Still, it was a change of power brought about by mass street protests — the kind of development the Kremlin has long viewed with deep suspicion.
For most Armenian protesters, the country’s foreign policy was broadly acceptable. Joint exercises with NATO and participation in alliance missions in Kosovo and Afghanistan coexisted without major friction with membership in the Russian-led CSTO. That membership gave Armenia access to Russian weapons at preferential prices and required it to take part in regular drills — whether in the forests of Belarus or the mountains of Tajikistan. On paper, the CSTO still upheld the principle of collective defense. In practice, that principle had never been tested. As long as no serious threat materialized, everyone simply hoped that allies would show up when it mattered.
It is hard to imagine Russia continuing to supply weapons to Ukraine after 2014. Yet that is exactly what happened with Armeni after the 2018 revolution. A $ 100 million credit had been approved under Serzh Sargsyan, but the bulk of deliveries occurred under Pashinyan’s first term. Until the 2020 Karabakh war, Russia accounted for 94 percent of Armenia’s arms imports.
Initially, Moscow was also comfortable with the new Armenian leadership’s stance on the Eurasian Economic Union. As an opposition figure, Pashinyan had been highly skeptical of the EAEU. Eight months before taking power, he even sponsored a bill to withdraw from the union. Many of the arguments he made then remain relevant today — particularly the claim that the EAEU functioned more as a political instrument for keeping Armenia inside Moscow’s orbit. Once in office, however, Pashinyan changed his rhetoric and acknowledged the economic benefits of membership.
There were also political gestures of goodwill. Armenia became the only country to respond positively to Moscow’s request to send troops to Syria. The Kremlin had been pressing neighbors on this since 2017, with particular emphasis on Kazakhstan and Kyrgyzstan. In the end, it was Armenian sappers and medics who deployed to Aleppo in 2019.
Even after the 2020 defeat in Karabakh, it could not be said that Yerevan had made a final choice to turn away from Moscow. Russian peacekeepers in Karabakh and border guards on the Armenia-Azerbaijan frontier still offered at least some prospect of stability. Moscow, for its part, refrained from fully backing the Armenian opposition, even though opportunities existed in late 2020 and early 2021 when Pashinyan’s position looked extremely fragile. The Kremlin chose to preserve the status quo. “The Russian president, of course, does not need Nikol Pashinyan to resign and render his signature on the trilateral document meaningless,” wrote Putin’s chronicler Andrey Kolesnikov in December 2020.
The logic was straightforward: at the time, Pashinyan had no serious rivals. The bloc of former president Robert Kocharyan won just over 20 percent in the 2021 parliamentary elections; Pashinyan’s party took nearly 54 percent. The day after the vote, Dmitry Peskov stated that “Pashinyan’s party scored a convincing victory.”
Years of Upheaval
Tensions and mutual distrust between Moscow and Yerevan intensified sharply after Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine. This shift was not initiated by the Armenian side. Experience living next to Iran had taught Yerevan to maintain pragmatic relations even with international pariahs when survival required it.
That was the approach in 2022−2023. While some personnel from the 15th Separate Guards Motor Rifle Alexandria Brigade were committing war crimes in Ukraine (including reports of executions of civilians in the village of Peremoga in Kyiv region), others were simultaneously providing security for the Armenian population in Karabakh.
At that stage, local residents had few complaints about the Russian peacekeepers. In fact, the peacekeepers often acted, quietly, in Armenian interests. A telling example was the case of Norayr Mirzoyan: after he threw a grenade at Azerbaijani soldiers at a checkpoint, Russian troops did not hand him over to Baku but transferred him to the authorities of the unrecognized Republic of Artsakh.
This de facto loyalty to Armenians ultimately worked against Russia itself. It encouraged Azerbaijan to unilaterally close the Lachin corridor and impose a blockade on Karabakh. Had Russian forces conducted thorough inspections of all incoming traffic, Baku would likely have had little pretext for such measures. Instead, weapons and fuel for military equipment continued to flow through the corridor.
In theory, this should have strengthened sympathy between Russia and Armenia while creating friction between Moscow and Baku. In practice, Russia managed to damage relations with both neighbors at once. The peacekeepers proved unable to prevent Azerbaijan’s final takeover of Karabakh. But the deeper failure lay elsewhere: senior Russian generals responsible for CSTO cooperation and Russian diplomats simply did not do their jobs.
When Azerbaijan began pressing Yerevan to accept a peace deal on its own terms, it unexpectedly gained support from the European Union. This now looks paradoxical: Armenia has become Brussels’ closest partner in the region, while Azerbaijan regularly faces criticism over human rights and increasingly presents itself as a Eurasian rather than European state. At the time, however, Baku and Brussels shared a clear interest — both wanted Russian peacekeepers out as quickly as possible. Armenia and Russia wanted the opposite: to keep them in place as long as possible.
Why, then, did Yerevan not double down on Russia and instead agree to negotiate along the European track, recognizing Karabakh as part of Azerbaijan already in October 2022?
In retrospect, Pashinyan can frame it as a conscious choice “in favor of Armenia’s independence.” In reality, it was a choice made with a gun to the head. Less than a month earlier, in September 2022, heavy fighting with artillery and armor broke out on the internationally recognized Armenia-Azerbaijan border. The CSTO failed to respond adequately: its mission arrived only after the fighting had died down, and there was no collective condemnation of Azerbaijan. Pashinyan was so angered that he refused to sign the final document of the November CSTO summit.
The September 2022 clashes forced Yerevan to ask a basic question: if not Russia, then who could serve even as a partial security backstop? Armenia effectively washed its hands of Karabakh and accepted an unarmed EU civilian monitoring mission along the border — observers with binoculars, no weapons. Moscow immediately linked the mission’s presence to NATO.
The CSTO allies’ failure to fulfill their obligations to Armenia became one of the main reasons for freezing Armenia’s participation in the organization, including the suspension of membership payments. The organization’s charter clearly spells out the consequences: first loss of voting rights (until the debt is cleared), then expulsion for “non-fulfillment of obligations.” The current Armenian government appears fully prepared for this scenario.
Yerevan’s position might have been different if the CSTO had at least preserved one of its main advantages — uninterrupted deliveries of Russian weapons at domestic prices. After the war in Ukraine began, this became impossible. According to the Armenian side, Russia failed to fulfill its obligations under the 2023 contract even though Yerevan had prepaid around $ 400 million. The dispute was only resolved in 2025. As Secretary of Armenia’s Security Council Armen Grigoryan stated, by 2024 Russia’s share in Armenia’s arms imports had fallen from the previous 96 percent to less than 10 percent.
The results of Moscow’s policy were visible at the Republic Day parade on 28 May. As Nikol Pashinyan himself noted, the event featured weapons and equipment from seven countries. “This is the result of a policy based on the ‘Real Armenia’ concept,” he said, referring to the new foreign-policy doctrine of peaceful coexistence with neighbors and refusal to rely exclusively on Moscow as the main security guarantor.
Alongside the usual Russian tanks and artillery, Armenia’s arsenal now includes French Caesar self-propelled howitzers, Indian Pinaka multiple-launch rocket systems and Akash air-defense missiles, as well as Iranian and Chinese equipment. Domestic production is also developing — for example, the “Razdan” mortars. In May 2026, according to High-Tech Industry Minister Mkhitar Ayrapetyan, Armenian-made weapons were exported for the first time in the country’s history.
After the war in Ukraine began, the only area of growth in Armenian-Russian relations was sanctions-evasion schemes. Because the two countries do not share a border, only high-value goods made commercial sense: gold, diamonds, and electronics. Precious metals and stones moved through Armenia to the UAE, while smartphones and other electronics reached Russia via a stop in Yerevan. This straightforward arrangement turned Mobile Centre Art into Armenia’s largest taxpayer. Bilateral trade turnover nearly doubled in 2022, rising from $ 2.6 billion to $ 5 billion, and reached $ 6.4 billion by 2025.
Pragmatic Shift
As Armenia’s parliamentary elections drew closer, analysts increasingly argued that the Kremlin would do whatever it took to remove Nikol Pashinyan’s government. The reasons cited were the officially declared course toward EU membership (parliament even passed a special law last year) and a series of moves that irritated Moscow — including Volodymyr Zelensky’s visit to Yerevan for the European Political Community summit and repeated statements by Armenian officials about links between the leadership of the Armenian Apostolic Church and Russian intelligence services. In the heat of the conflict with the Church, Pashinyan publicly declared: “I need a Catholicos who will not answer to a senior lieutenant of a foreign intelligence service and will not report daily to lieutenants of a foreign intelligence service.” He gave his main election rival, billionaire Samvel Karapetyan, the nickname “the Kaluga oligarch,” highlighting his Russian ties.
Despite accusations of electoral interference, however, the Armenian authorities never fully closed the channel to Moscow. In February, the most outspoken critic of Russia in the government — Parliament Speaker Alen Simonyan — traveled to Moscow for talks with Sergei Lavrov. On 1 April, Nikol Pashinyan himself met with Vladimir Putin. Contrary to the common narrative, the meeting was not a summons to the Kremlin carpet: it was Yerevan that initiated the conversation, and the step looked entirely rational.
According to a May poll by the International Republican Institute, 35 percent of Armenians still consider Russia the most important political partner (only France ranks higher at 39 percent, with the EU at 34 percent). At the same time, 32 percent now name Russia as the main threat — a historic high. Nevertheless, more than half of respondents believe Armenia’s foreign policy should be oriented toward both the West and Russia simultaneously. This is precisely the line Pashinyan has been promoting. It is therefore unsurprising that, just before the elections, he announced another meeting with Putin. According to the Armenian side, the two leaders discussed the plans by phone on 1 June while Pashinyan was receiving birthday congratulations.
Even so, after the elections Russian authorities refused to congratulate Nikol Pashinyan on his victory and criticized both the conduct of the campaign and Armenia’s foreign policy. Notably, even observers from CIS countries recognized the elections as fair and open. Congratulations came from Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi. That Iranian gesture directly contradicts the Kremlin’s logic that a pro-Western government in Armenia threatens stability across the region — including for Iran.
However on 12 June, the Russian Embassy in Yerevan held its traditional reception to mark Russia Day. Speaker of Parliament Alen Simonyan, Economy Minister Gevorg Papoyan, Infrastructure Minister Davit Khudatyan and Deputy Prime Minister Mher Grigoryan were among the guests. Russian Ambassador Sergey Kopirkin described the relationship as having entered “a stage of reassessment and adaptation to changing global and regional realities.” In practice, the event amounted to Moscow’s quiet acceptance of the election results.
Against this backdrop, threats to ban Armenian flowers and fruit or to raise gas prices look considerably less alarming. The figure of $ 600 per thousand cubic meters that has been floated in some Russian commentary would be economically ruinous for Armenia; the current price under the long-term contract stands at $ 177 for the state and roughly $ 360 for end consumers. Nikol Pashinyan has responded with studied calm, noting that the price is contractually fixed until 2032 and that any unilateral revision would constitute a breach of agreement.
Russian practice suggests that most such threats are designed to signal displeasure rather than to be implemented. Moscow has little appetite for creating another Moldova — a country with which it has severed almost all institutional ties. This is the core of the argument made by Armenian political analyst Alexander Iskandaryan: the relationship now rests almost exclusively on economic interdependence. Remove the economic component and very little remains. While Armenia could, in theory, replace part of its Russian gas with Iranian or even Azerbaijani supplies, such a shift would require years of infrastructure work.
The question of Armenia’s continued membership in the Eurasian Economic Union is still unresolved. At the latest EAEU summit, Russia — with the support of Belarus, Kazakhstan and Kyrgyzstan — called on Yerevan to hold a referendum by December on whether to remain in the bloc or move toward the European Union. Unlike the CSTO, the EAEU treaty contains no mechanism for expulsion. If Putin and Pashinyan can identify a mutually acceptable compromise, the issue can probably be allowed to fade without formal rupture.
Despite the sharp public rhetoric, Moscow appears to have prepared for Pashinyan’s victory. There are indications that the disinformation campaign against him was deliberately moderated once it became clear it would not change the outcome. This reading is supported by the Armenian fact-checking project Provereno, which found that AI-generated videos targeting the prime minister failed to gain significant traction.
Even if Armenia eventually leaves the CSTO and faces restrictions within the EAEU, relations with Russia are unlikely to return to the closeness of 2017. At the same time, Yerevan is not expected to move dramatically away from Moscow. Uzbekistan and Azerbaijan already maintain partnerships with Russia that fall short of full membership in its integration projects, and neither case is treated in Moscow as a strategic catastrophe. The difference is one of perception: Armenia has long been viewed as a highly dependent partner, while Azerbaijan is seen as a more self-sufficient actor and is therefore granted greater latitude.
For the Armenian government, the overriding domestic priority remains economic diversification. Managing a new equilibrium with Russia is one of the central foreign-policy tasks on that agenda. Given the Kremlin’s extreme sensitivity to anything touching the memory of the Second World War, a demonstrative prosecution of the individual who vandalized the military memorial in Gyumri would be an inexpensive symbolic gesture. At the same time, Yerevan’s refusal to extradite mathematician Mikhail Verbitsky — the subject of politically motivated charges in Russia — has already signaled its commitment to European legal standards.
Criminal cases against prominent opposition figures — Samvel Karapetyan, Robert Kocharyan and Gagik Tsarukyan — whom Pashinyan has vowed to bring to justice will also shape the atmosphere. In Armenian political culture, such statements are rarely taken at face value. They function primarily as instruments of pressure intended to lock in the new domestic and foreign-policy balance rather than as firm commitments to lengthy prison terms.
The relationship is entering a more transactional phase. Both sides appear to have concluded that preserving a functional minimum is preferable to open rupture.
