Jens Asbjørn Bøgen
The language Moscow once reserved for Kyiv is now aimed at a smaller neighbor in the South Caucasus.
For months, Russia has watched Armenia drift further out of its orbit, from Yerevan’s frozen participation in Moscow’s security bloc to a 2025 parliament vote that opened the door to EU accession. The Kremlin’s warnings have grown sharper with each step.
On October 4, one of Vladimir Putin’s closest allies made the comparison explicit. In an interview with Iran’s state broadcaster IRIB, Russian Security Council Deputy Chairman Dmitry Medvedev said that “the worst thing that could happen to Armenia is its transformation into a new Ukraine.”
Medvedev added that Yerevan’s leadership had chosen to “change the direction of its development” and that the shift “will not lead to anything good,” the Armenian outlet Yerepouni reported, citing the IRIB interview.
A warning aimed at Yerevan’s EU bid
The remarks follow Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan’s August 24 announcement that Armenia could lodge a formal EU membership application in the near future, a step his government has prepared since parliament passed an accession bill in March 2025.
Moscow has responded with a widening set of economic warnings. In April, Russian Security Council Deputy Secretary Aleksei Shevtsov told TASS that EU accession could cost Armenia about 23% of its GDP under conservative estimates, drive inflation up by 22.6 percentage points and bring further hikes in natural gas prices.
Russia currently supplies Armenia with gas at $177.5 per 1,000 cubic meters, less than a third of what European buyers pay.
Russia’s phytosanitary regulator Rosselkhoznadzor suspended imports of all regulated Armenian plant products from June 12, citing repeated detections of quarantine pests.
From Moldova to Yerevan
Medvedev’s framing extends a pattern Moscow applied earlier to Moldova and Georgia, warning former Soviet states that closer ties with Brussels will carry a price.
Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said in August that if Yerevan no longer considers membership in the Russian-led Collective Security Treaty Organization necessary, Armenia is “free” to leave the bloc.
Armenia froze its participation in the CSTO in February 2024 and has not reversed that decision.
Armenia’s government had not issued an official response to Medvedev’s remarks by publication time.
