Beniamin Matevosyan: banning Putin from entering Armenia, rolling out the red carpet for Zelensk

(How relations with Russia will change after the Yerevan EU summit)

Yerevan’s foreign policy has lost any remaining “multi-vector” features, turning into an open demarche against Moscow. Today’s Armenia is a country where legal mechanisms are used as a geopolitical shields: ratification of the Rome Statute has effectively closed the republic’s borders to Vladimir Putin. The fact that Armenia’s Constitutional Court suddenly “saw the light” in 2023 and recognized the statute as lawful, precisely after the ICC issued an arrest warrant for the Russian leader, left little room for ambiguous interpretation. The official excuses about the need to litigate against Azerbaijan look like nothing more than a convenient cover for legalizing a political break with the Kremlin.

The symbolism of all this reaches its peak on the eve of the European Political Community summit in Yerevan this May. Against the backdrop of a de facto entry ban to the President of Russia, Nikol Pashinyan is “rolling out the red carpet” for Volodymyr Zelensky. The appearance of the Ukrainian leader in the capital of a country that formally remains a Russian ally within the CSTO is not merely a diplomatic gesture, but a public declaration of where Yerevan stands in the current global conflict. The May summit, which will bring together some 50 delegations, including Emmanuel Macron and the leadership of the European Commission, will serve as a platform for the “new Armenia,” that has chosen to make a demonstrative pivot in its geopolitical orientation.

The depth of this shift is underscored by a fundamental difference in approaches to partnership. The European Union today finds itself in a state of cold, and in many respects direct, war with Russia, bankrolling military operations in Ukraine. While Russia fights to roll back EU influence, Armenia had, until now, tried to stay out of that confrontation and declined to join Russia’s economic countermeasures. The reality, however, is that Brussels is now effectively demanding unconditional solidarity from Yerevan. Therein lies the key distinction: whereas the alliance with Russia allowed for a degree of autonomy on economic matters, the “European choice” requires Armenia to become a fully-fledged instrument of the West’s anti-Russian strategy.

The upcoming Armenia–EU summit, attended by António Costa and Ursula von der Leyen, will mark the final chord in the dismantling of Yerevan’s former arrangements with Moscow.

Yerevan is betting that a conspicuous distancing from Putin and a rapprochement with Zelensky will buy it security and Western goodwill. But in abandoning the Russian vector in exchange for European promises, Pashinyan’s government is drawing the country into the epicenter of someone else’s conflict. Rather than a balance of power, the region is getting a new flashpoint, one where Armenia voluntarily transforms itself into an EU forward base, heedless of the risks that come with so abrupt and politically aggressive a break from a historic ally.

Think about it…