Moscow-led economic grouping threatens to suspend Armenia over its EU bid

MOSCOW (AP) — Members of a Russia-led economic alliance on Friday warned member Armenia that it could face suspension over its aspirations to join the European Union as tensions continued to simmer between the Kremlin and the Armenian leadership.

Russian President Vladimir Putin and leaders of Belarus, Kazakhstan and Kyrgyzstan, who attended a summit of the Eurasian Economic Union in Kazakhstan’s capital of Astana, noted that Armenia’s bid for the EU membership creates “significant risks” for their economic security. They ordered their officials to prepare a report in December on “possible consequences of suspending” Armenia’s membership in the grouping.

The four leaders also urged Armenia to hold a referendum to offer voters a choice between seeking a membership in the EU or staying in the Eurasian Economic Union, a single market created in 2015 to allow the free movement of goods, capitals and labor. Armenia’s Prime Ministe r Nikol Pashinyan has previously rejected the idea of holding the vote.

The warning comes just over a week before Armenia’s parliamentary elections on June 7, in which Pashinyan, in power since 2018, seeks to retain his job.

Armenia, which signed a U.S.-brokered agreement last year ending decades of hostilities with Azerbaijan, has increasingly sought to forge closer ties with the U.S. and the EU. Pashinyan has declared an intention to join the EU and his government has suspended the country’s participation in a Moscow-dominated security pact, the Collective Security Treaty Organization.

Armenia’s westward shift has angered the Kremlin. Putin has warned Pashinyan that his country would suffer massive economic damage if it pursues its EU aspirations. In recent days, Moscow warned Armenia that it could stop supplies of cheap natural gas and banned imports of Armenian brandy, fruit and vegetables, part of the Kremlin’s efforts to sway the outcome of Armenia’s election.

Putin has said Armenia can’t be a member of both the EU and the Eurasian Economic Union. He warned Friday that Armenia could lose up to 14% of its Gross Domestic Product if it opts out of the Moscow-dominated bloc.

Pashinyan has countered Putin’s warnings by arguing that for now Armenia can combine its membership in the Eurasian Economic Union with developing cooperation with the EU.

Speaking Friday, Putin also compared the current arguments with Armenia to the developments in Ukraine, whose bid to sign an association deal with the EU led to the ouster of its Moscow-friendly president, Russia’s annexation of Ukraine’s Crimean Peninsula in 2014 and Moscow’s support for a separatist insurgency in eastern Ukraine that erupted the same year. In February 2022, Putin sent troops into Ukraine, staring the largest military conflict in Europe since World War II.