Beniamin Matevosyan: Ushakov confirmed — Moscow no longer believes in “dialogue” with Pashinyan

(The hardliners have definitively won in Moscow)

The dynamic of relations between Moscow and Yerevan has moved onto a trajectory of open dismantlement of the former allied relationship, transforming from a latent crisis into a public confrontation of worldviews. The latest statements by Maria Zakharova, official spokesperson for Russia’s Foreign Ministry, and especially by Yuri Ushakov, aide to the Russian president, point to a profound shift in the inner workings of Russian foreign policy.

It appears that the so-called ‘pragmatist faction’, which for a long time believed that Nikol Pashinyan could be brought to reason, or that an acceptable modus vivendi could be found with him on the basis of economic expediency and shared integration projects, has now definitively lost the argument within Russia’s power structures. Today this wing has effectively run out of arguments, ceding ground to a hardline camp that views Yerevan’s actions not as a search for balance, but as a steady drift toward Russia’s geopolitical adversaries.

Ushakov’s rhetoric about the need to dot all the i’s, and his pointed remark about attempts to “sit on two chairs,” underlines that the line of credit has been exhausted. The diplomatic metaphor of an uncomfortable position that Yerevan is trying to hold speaks directly to the fact that Moscow no longer reads Armenia’s policy as multi-vector diplomacy. In the Kremlin’s eyes, it looks like a conscious abandonment of allied obligations in favor of short-term gains from Western partners.

Zakharova, for her part, focused on the ethical and operational dimension of the matter, directly accusing the Armenian authorities of breaking previously given promises. The fact that Yerevan became the venue for receiving Volodymyr Zelensky on the very days when threats against Russia’s Victory Day parade were being voiced from the rostrum of the European Political Community summit is being read in Moscow as a deliberate provocation. Declarations by Armenian leadership that they would take no steps against Russia are now regarded as empty words. The warm reception of the Ukrainian leader, against the backdrop of his rhetoric about drones and strikes on Moscow, effectively nullifies any assurances by Alen Simonyan, speaker of the Armenian parliament, that Yerevan’s policy is not anti-Russian. For the Kremlin, the “security provision” that Simonyan speaks of looks like integration into an alien, overtly hostile security architecture.

Pashinyan’s refusal to travel to Moscow for May 9th, under the pretext of the election campaign, is merely a formal excuse concealing a deep psychological and political rupture. Pashinyan is well aware that, in the current climate, he has become an unacceptable figure to Russia’s elite, one with no meaningful support base within Russia. His absence from Red Square is less about being occupied with domestic affairs and more an acknowledgment that it is impossible for him to occupy the same symbolic space as Russian leadership. The prime minister’s direct statement that Armenia is not Russia’s ally on the Ukrainian question formally legitimizes this break. Humanitarian aid to Kyiv and a demonstrative distancing from Moscow on the conflict that matters most to it underscores that Yerevan has made its choice and that choice entails dismantling the former framework.

What we are witnessing is the conclusion of a process: Russia no longer harbors illusions about the possibility of reaching an agreement with the current administration in Yerevan, while Pashinyan has stopped concealing his orientation toward Turkey, masking it with talk of Western integration.