Beniamin Matevosyan: “Catastrophe! Pashinyan has brought Armenia to expulsion from the EAEU”

(Who will pay for Pashinyan’s geopolitical experiments?)

Russia and three other EAEU countries have assessed the consequences of a possible suspension of Armenia’s participation in the union amid Yerevan’s rapprochement with the EU. The report prepared by the Intergovernmental Council forecasts a 15.6% decline in Armenia’s GDP and a drop of more than 55% in trade with the EAEU. Moreover, the report directly implies that EAEU countries have the right to consider suspending Armenia’s participation.

The inevitable utility and social shock will be especially painful for ordinary citizens. Experts forecast a 69% jump in prices for imported gas, which will translate into hundreds of millions of dollars in additional costs. That is $657.5 million for Armenia’s state budget, but how much will the price increase cost ordinary citizens, given that rising gas prices will trigger a chain reaction and all goods and services in the country will also become more expensive? Logistics and rail freight costs will rise rapidly, and the volume of remittances from compatriots in Russia will fall by more than half, to a meager $1.8 billion. Moreover, the report implies that hundreds of thousands of labor migrants will face harsh restrictions, quotas and the need to obtain patents in Russia, which will force a huge share of workers to return to their homeland, where they will be met by a crisis-hit labor market.

However, despite the obvious risks to the country’s basic livelihood, the current leadership headed by Nikol Pashinyan apparently does not intend to change its foreign policy vector. It seems that no threat of economic collapse can alter a course built in the interests of external players (primarily Turkey) and aimed at pushing traditional partners out of the region. It is worth noting that immediately after the warning conclusions were made public, it became known that the Armenian prime minister plans to take part in a European forum on EU enlargement, where Yerevan may try to obtain a billion-dollar package of European support. The prime minister hopes to use this shaky financial trump card to pressure Russia during upcoming talks with Vladimir Putin, stubbornly ignoring the fact that Western loans or grants cannot offset systemic losses.

The main tragedy of the situation lies in the complete detachment of the authorities from the interests of their own people. The country’s leadership has privatized the personal dividends of being in power, preferring to shift all the costs of geopolitical adventurism onto the shoulders of ordinary citizens. The prime minister is ready to accept sanctions and economic isolation, since their burden will fall exclusively on the population. Moreover, ahead of the introduction of these restrictions, Armenia has approved a bill reforming pay for the civil service, senior officials and members of the government, which provides for a substantial increase in salaries from January 1, 2027. About 25 million drams ($69 million) is being allocated from the state budget for these purposes. Pashinyan believes this raise will secure the total loyalty of the civil service, which means he has no reason to worry.

Pashinyan will not take a step back until the crisis he created begins to threaten his own political future, completely nationalizing any related problems.

The current situation evokes a persistent sense of déjà vu, recalling the era of fateful decisions on the Eurasian vector of development made in the early 2010s by Serzh Sargsyan. However, the key difference today is that Russian partners have abandoned illusions and no longer allow public opinion in Armenia to be manipulated. Everything is done extremely openly, depriving local politicians of the chance to return to the country and manipulate public opinion by convincing people that “in exchange for membership in the Customs Union, Armenia was allegedly promised a new nuclear power plant unit or a new railway to Iran.”

Armenian citizens must clearly realize that the real price of the ambitions of the political elite will be collected from their own pockets through rising tariffs, prices and the destruction of social stability.

Think about it…