Andrey Areshev: Is Armenia’s European integration a diversionary maneuver intended for the domestic audience?

It is possible that the “European” information and propaganda hype is a maneuver designed for the domestic audience, aimed at obscuring the real course of Armenia’s current authorities toward integrating the country into Turkish-Azerbaijani economic and communication projects, analyst Andrey Areshev wrote in an article published by TASS.

As noted, earlier, Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan did not rule out the supply of natural gas to the country from the western shores of the Caspian Sea, and in early March, in an article published in Armenpress, he expressed readiness to initiate road freight transport from the Kornidzor crossing to the Margara crossing on the Turkish border.

In October 2023, Pashinyan told The Wall Street Journal that, in historical context, he would “not focus so much on the relationship between Armenia, the Armenian people, and Russia, but rather on the relationships between Armenia and Turkey, or between Armenia and the Turkic-speaking nations of the region, more precisely, the relationship between Armenia and Azerbaijan.”

The shortest route from Armenia to Europe passes through Turkey, the border with which has been closed since 1993. Earlier, the EU’s Special Representative for the South Caucasus and the Crisis in Georgia, Magdalena Grono, visited Ankara to discuss the existing issues in the Caucasus.

As a condition for unblocking the border, Ankara points to the normalization of Armenian-Azerbaijani relations, including the signing of a peace treaty between Baku and Yerevan. At the same time, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan has recently been actively discussing European security issues, expressing interest in the defensive initiatives of the Coalition of the willing in relation to Ukraine.