Nikol Pashinyan spoke after a cabinet session on Thursday. “The EAEU is de facto paralyzed, and this paralysis is showing signs of deepening,” he said. He went further on the outcome: “If this issue is not resolved promptly, I am 100 percent sure that Armenia will overcome this problem, not the EAEU.” He also rejected what he called Russia’s “approach to exclusivity of relations”.
The restrictions have climbed a ladder: flowers prohibited from 22 May, all quarantine-regulated goods and their transit to other EAEU states from 12 June, dairy from 27 July. Pashinyan asked Vladimir Putin to lift the bans on Monday. The answer came the next day through Russia’s foreign intelligence service, which published four statements on what leaving the union would cost Armenia.
“Armenia will overcome this problem, not the EAEU.”
Nikol Pashinyan, 30 July
The timing is institutional as well as commercial. Armenia’s new parliament convenes on Sunday, 2 August; the government resigns by procedure and a prime minister is appointed. Pashinyan says the union remains the platform where he will raise the agenda, and the next session of the union’s intergovernmental council is his stated venue.
The Asian Development Bank has already written the restrictions into Armenia’s 2026 forecast. The question the summer leaves open is narrower than exit or stay: whether a union that cannot move the $13.5 million of cheese Armenia sold Russia last year can still call its market single.