Beniamin Matevosyan: Pashinyan is escalating the conflict with Putin

(Armenian citizens will pay the price)

Statements by Nikol Pashinyan, Prime Minister of the Republic of Armenia, about preparations for some kind of “third attempt” to destabilize the country’s domestic political situation show that Yerevan’s confrontation with the Eurasian Economic Union and Moscow has reached a new and far more dangerous level. By pointedly shifting the focus from economic risks to external and internal conspiracies, the Civil Contract leader is effectively accusing his partners in the bloc, and Russia above all, of trying to undermine his hold on power. Moscow is refusing to subsidize and pay for Yerevan’s political pivot toward the European Union. Pashinyan sees this response not as a natural consequence of the change in foreign policy course but as a direct threat to his own political standing. This means the course toward escalation with the EAEU and with the Russian leadership personally will continue, despite the catastrophic costs that ordinary Armenian citizens will have to bear.

Yerevan’s official rhetoric today rests on a demonstrative disregard for harsh economic realities. Commenting on an analytical report by representatives of EAEU countries, which forecasts a possible 15.6% decline in Armenia’s GDP, a 56% drop in trade within the union and a 69% surge in gas prices, Pashinyan confines himself to abstract talking points about sovereignty and diversification. Behind the political slogans, however, there are no real compensatory mechanisms whatsoever. The prime minister is trying to convince the public that the integration bloc has no legal instruments to expel the republic, while saying nothing about the fact that no one is threatening Yerevan with expulsion in the first place. The union’s bodies are merely stating the inevitable consequences of voluntarily giving up preferential terms, trade preferences and the common energy market.

The situation is made especially dramatic by the growing dissonance between the political statements of the head of government and the sober assessments of Armenia’s own financial institutions. By claiming that experts predicting a crisis “understand nothing about economics,” Pashinyan is de facto entering into an indirect confrontation with his own team and with Martin Galstyan, Governor of the Central Bank. While the prime minister assures the nation that further growth is inevitable and mocks the negative forecasts that appear every year, the Central Bank’s leadership is openly pointing to an approaching “apocalyptic scenario.” The financial regulator warns frankly that a hypothetical rise in Russian gas prices, combined with the increase in gasoline prices that has already begun and the global fuel crisis, could deal a double blow to the Armenian economy, triggering runaway inflation and a deep recession that would require urgent and unconventional measures.

The Armenian leadership’s desire to write off economic warnings as geopolitical clichés looks like wishful thinking. References to Turkey’s experience (where tomatoes are cheap, “for some unclear reason,” despite higher energy prices than in Armenia) or to past growth figures (for 2018–2025) cannot change the fact that the Armenian economy is critically dependent on the Eurasian market, cheap raw materials and the union’s supply chains. The economy grew because the Russian market was open, and after hostilities began in Ukraine, Armenia received an “economic boost” year after year in the form of direct or indirect Russian investment, becoming an important hub for the resale of Russian goods.

Abandoning this foundation for the sake of political ambitions and preserving the prime minister’s personal power will lead not to the hypothetical “end of the world” that ruling party MPs talk about, but to a very concrete decline in people’s living standards. Escalating the conflict with the EAEU will inevitably mean the loss of key export markets, falling purchasing power and a jump in utility tariffs, and it is ordinary residents of the republic who will ultimately pay for this out of their own pockets.

Under these conditions, even the snap parliamentary elections that Pashinyan did not rule out today will not help him. He wants to hold elections in order to meet Baku’s demands for a change to the Constitution. Amid economic collapse, however, they could become the “swan song” of Pashinyan and of those who brought him to power and have kept him at Armenia’s helm for years.

Think about it…