Armenian PM rejects Russia’s demand for EU referendum as relations nosedive

Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan has rejected a call from Moscow to hold an immediate referendum on leaving the Russian-led Eurasian Economic Union (EAEU) to join the European Union.

The refusal from Pashinyan came on Monday as Russian President Vladimir Putin called, ostensibly to wish him a happy birthday. The “unreasonable” demand, as the Armenian leader termed it, came amid a rapid escalation of economic and diplomatic pressure from the Kremlin as its traditional ally increasingly looks to the West.

Tensions boiled over at the EAEU summit in Kazakhstan on May 29, as Putin and fellow bloc members Belarus, Kazakhstan and Kyrgyzstan issued a joint statement urging Armenia to hold a referendum on joining the EU “as soon as possible”.

Membership of both the EU and EAEU is impossible, the Russian leader insists.

Putin also appeared to make a barely-veiled threat, warning Armenia against pursuing its Western ambitions, and noting that the “Ukrainian scenario” had begun with Kyiv’s EU aspirations.

In a video address broadcast on social media, Pashinyan stated that the government in the capital Yerevan would continue working within the EAEU until a choice between the two blocs “becomes unavoidable”, noting that any referendum before Armenia formally applies for EU candidate status remains purely theoretical.

“Putting a theoretical choice to a referendum is, of course, neither very sensible nor justified,” Pashinyan said, describing ties with Russia as being in a “transformation phase”.

Both the Kremlin and Yerevan said that Putin had called Pashinyan to discuss the outcome of the summit, and to offer him birthday wishes.