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Yerevan is drawing up plans to formally seek membership in the European Union, Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan announced in an address to parliament on Monday, marking one of the most dramatic realignments in the South Caucasus since the Soviet collapse.
Under the sequencing laid out by the prime minister, Armenia will first submit its application, await a response from Brussels, and negotiate the terms of an accession roadmap with the bloc before finally placing the question of EU membership before voters in a referendum, which he indicated could happen soon after the application is filed.
The move escalates a confrontation with the Russia-led Collective Security Treaty Organisation, of which Armenia remains a member. Months earlier, fellow alliance members had pressed Yerevan to pick between staying in the pact and pursuing European integration through a national vote. At that stage, Pashinyan called such a decision premature, as Moscow squeezed the ex-Soviet republic economically and President Vladimir Putin warned of a "Ukrainian scenario" should Yerevan drift westward.
On Monday, however, Pashinyan struck a markedly different tone, saying he would welcome it if the CSTO expelled Armenia outright, since that "would free us from the dilemma" of having to withdraw itself. For now, though, he said his country would stay in the alliance until the choice between Moscow's security bloc and Brussels becomes impossible to defer.
Reflecting on two centuries of ties, Pashinyan noted that Russian-Armenian relations have long rested on the assumption that Moscow guarantees Armenian statehood. The wars with Azerbaijan over Karabakh in 2021 through 2023, he argued, exposed how far Russia's capacity to play that role had eroded under the weight of its own security burdens — a shortcoming he accused his country's leadership of having failed to heed historically.
The pivot follows last year's landmark peace agreement with Azerbaijan, signed in August 2025, which has opened the door to economic collaboration between the longtime adversaries with backing from the EU and Washington. Even so, Armenia remains tethered to Russia for energy and much of its infrastructure, and Pashinyan paired his EU announcement with a demand that Moscow surrender its railway concession in Armenia, which runs through 2038, so the network can be linked to international corridors, potentially with Kazakh or Emirati investment.
The Kremlin reacted quickly and coolly. Spokesman Dmitry Peskov cautioned that adopting EU standards could produce what he described as deep trade contradictions that would hurt Armenia above all, while adding that Yerevan was free to quit the CSTO if its national interests no longer required membership — a sign that relations between the two former allies are set for a rocky road ahead.
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