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Armenia joins the countries that dream of membership in the European Union. Yerevan's government has approved a bill calling on the country, once part of the Soviet Union, to launch a bid to join the bloc.
The nation has in recent years deepened ties with the West at the expense of traditionally close relations with Vladimir Putin's Russia, which has been accused of failing to protect it from long-time rival Azerbaijan. The bill was drafted after a successful petition.
Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan stressed that the public should not expect a quick acceptance and that in any case he would seek approval by referendum. "At this stage, before we decide whether to hold a referendum, we must draw up a roadmap and discuss it with the European Union", the head of government underlined.
Parliament is expected to review the bill by the end of the month.
Moscow's reaction
Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov warned that the nation cannot join the EU while remaining a member of the Eurasian Economic Union, a trading bloc of several post-Soviet countries. The initiative is "a sovereign right" of Armenia, the spokesman said, adding however that "it is simply impossible to hypothetically be a member" of both the EU and the Moscow-led Eurasian Economic Union.
The problem of Azerbaijan
Any path to membership will not be easy. The mountainous, landlocked country of 2.7 million people does not border the Union and has been in conflict with Azerbaijan, one of the European states' main gas suppliers, since the late 1980s.
In 2023, Azerbaijan launched a lightning offensive to regain control of Nagorno-Karabakh, a breakaway region that has been run for more than three decades by its Armenian majority with support from Yerevan, forcing its population to flee . This week, Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev said Armenia posed a "fascist" threat that needed to be destroyed, in what Yerevan said could be a prelude to a new conflict.
Armenia would not be the first ex-Soviet country to join the bloc: three states that were once part of the USSR are now part of it: Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania.
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