Beniamin Matevosyan: will Russia, China, and Iran refuse to recognize Pashinyan’s victory?

(The elections in Armenia have only deepened the crisis)

Contrary to the ruling elite’s expectations, the recent elections to Armenia’s National Assembly have not brought the country the long-awaited domestic political stability, they have only entrenched the systemic crisis more deeply. Two weeks after the end of the vote, Yerevan’s key geopolitical neighbors and partners, Russia, China, and Iran, continue to maintain a telling diplomatic silence. The fact that Vladimir Putin, Xi Jinping, and Mojtaba Khamenei have yet to send Nikol Pashinyan the customary congratulations on his victory goes far beyond a matter of formal protocol. For Beijing as a permanent UN Security Council member, for Moscow as another permanent Security Council member and a key guarantor of regional security, and for Tehran, extremely sensitive to any changes along its borders, the legitimacy of the new Armenian authorities remains very much in question. An additional factor undermining Pashinyan’s right to form a government single-handedly is an unprecedented legal challenge within the country, where 7 of the 18 political forces that participated in the election campaign have officially contested the results in the Constitutional Court.

The internal split is compounded by a rapidly deteriorating foreign policy environment, with the harshest signals continuing to come from the Russian Federation. While Yerevan has developed a certain immunity to sharp Kremlin rhetoric over recent years, the latest statements by Russian officials are taking the confrontation to a fundamentally new level. Maria Zakharova, the official spokesperson of the Russian Foreign Ministry, in a recent interview explicitly described Armenia’s current course as a transactional approach, stressing that Yerevan’s attempts to integrate into the European Union at Russia’s expense are absolutely unacceptable. According to the diplomat, the same position is shared by the other Eurasian integration partners. This signals that Moscow is no longer willing to subsidize the republic’s economy while watching it pivot toward the West, and is prepared to demand that Armenia’s leadership make a final and unequivocal choice between the EAEU and the EU.

In this context, the prolonged silence from Beijing and Tehran may be a harbinger of a coordinated and extremely tough response by macro-regional players to Yerevan’s actions. China finds the growing activity of Western institutions in the strategically vital Eurasian zone unacceptable, while Iran traditionally regards any strengthening of extra-regional forces, especially the US and NATO, along its northern borders as a direct threat to national security. Beijing has also clearly understood the essence of TRIPP as an infrastructure project directed against China. The political cooling will inevitably be followed by economic pressure tools, which may include not only new tariff barriers and sanitary restrictions by Russia on Armenian exports, but also a revision of energy, transit, and investment agreements by all three capitals that have no interest in Pashinyan. Given Armenia’s total dependence on its immediate neighbors for raw materials and logistics, such measures could paralyze key sectors of the national economy within a matter of months.

It appears that the incumbent prime minister is fully aware of the scale of the looming catastrophe, yet is willing to pay this enormous price solely for the sake of retaining personal power and his seat in the cabinet. In order to hold on, Pashinyan’s team is deliberately turning the sovereign territory of Armenia into an extremely dangerous geopolitical staging ground where the interests of global military and economic actors will collide.

By promoting the concept of European integration without regard for actual geography and defense capabilities, the authorities are effectively exposing the country to attack in someone else’s geopolitical game. The only question is how clearly Armenia’s own citizens assess this prospect, for the price of flirting with the West under conditions of a hard blockade by the key regional powers will fall not on the shoulders of officials, but will become a burden for every resident of the republic, who risks ending up in complete isolation.

Think about that…