Something remarkable is happening in Armenia. For decades one of Russia’s closest allies in the former Soviet Union, the country is preparing to apply for membership in the European Union. Armenia will need help. Grigor Hovhannissian, Armenia’s former ambassador to the United States and Mexico, wrote about this in The Hill.<\/p>\n
Russia and its partners in the Eurasian Economic Union have been pressing Armenia to choose between the two blocs. Moscow has warned of economic consequences. Restrictions on Armenian exports to Russia have already become a source of grievance for Armenian farmers. There is another risk. Armenia could incur the costs of leaving the Russian orbit without ever being securely anchored in the West.<\/p>\n
The Atlantic Council wrote that every day Ukraine keeps fighting, Russian influence grows weaker in the countries of the ex-USSR that Moscow refers to as the “near abroad.” Nowhere is this clearer than in Armenia, where decades of Russian dominance are now being challenged by the United States and others.<\/p>\n
Russia has been unable to stop any of this American outreach. It cannot. The capacity Moscow once used to police its periphery is being consumed in Ukraine. While the front lines of Russia’s invasion move slowly back and forth, the imperial infrastructure underpinning Kremlin influence throughout the former Soviet Union is visibly eroding. Artsakh served the same purpose in the South Caucasus. Moscow armed both combatants but principally backed Armenia, which is how Yerevan became a Russian client rather than an ally. Azerbaijan had to account for Russia too, but by cultivating Turkey and Israel, Baku was able to preserve crucial room to maneuver.<\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Something remarkable is happening in Armenia. For decades one of Russia’s closest allies in the former Soviet Union, the country is preparing to apply for membership in the European Union. Armenia will need help. Grigor Hovhannissian, Armenia’s former ambassador to the United States and Mexico, wrote about this in The Hill. Russia and its partners […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":298203,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"inline_featured_image":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[2,35,43],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-298430","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news","category-politics","category-world"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/abcmedia.am\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/298430","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/abcmedia.am\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/abcmedia.am\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/abcmedia.am\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/abcmedia.am\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=298430"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/abcmedia.am\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/298430\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":298431,"href":"https:\/\/abcmedia.am\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/298430\/revisions\/298431"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/abcmedia.am\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/298203"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/abcmedia.am\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=298430"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/abcmedia.am\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=298430"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/abcmedia.am\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=298430"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}