{"id":623735,"date":"2026-06-06T02:49:09","date_gmt":"2026-06-06T02:49:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/623735\/"},"modified":"2026-06-06T02:49:09","modified_gmt":"2026-06-06T02:49:09","slug":"armenia-braces-for-election-as-russia-piles-pressure-on-pro-west-government","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/623735\/","title":{"rendered":"Armenia braces for election as Russia piles pressure on pro-West government"},"content":{"rendered":"<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">&#8220;The only way Russia can impact Armenia now is economic,&#8221; Fanyan said.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">But that is still a significant weapon for Moscow to wield. Russia supplies Armenia with gas at $177.50 (\u00a387) per 1,000 cubic metres, while European market prices, as Putin pointed out to Pashinyan in April, exceed $600.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">In late May, the Russian president also called on Armenia to hold a referendum &#8220;as soon as possible&#8221; on whether to join the EU or remain in the Russian-led Eurasian Economic Union (EAEU), a customs bloc from which Armenia benefits.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">Pashinyan swerved the challenge. Despite his developing, good-natured relationship with European leaders, Armenia doesn&#8217;t even have EU candidate status yet, and membership of the bloc is still a long way off.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">&#8220;We will continue to work within the EAEU until the choice between its current membership and the EU becomes unavoidable,&#8221; he said. &#8220;Today this choice is theoretical in nature.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">Still, the EU is not standing back idly. On Thursday, European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen pledged \u20ac50m (\u00a343m) for Armenia in the face of what she said was a case of &#8220;Moscow weaponising economic relations for political pressure&#8221;, and added the EU would ease trade with Yerevan for goods targeted by Moscow.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"&#8220;The only way Russia can impact Armenia now is economic,&#8221; Fanyan said. But that is still a significant&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":623736,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[49,50,51,47,52,48],"class_list":["post-623735","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-headlines","tag-headlines","tag-news","tag-top-news","tag-top-stories","tag-topnews","tag-topstories"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/623735","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=623735"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/623735\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/623736"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=623735"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=623735"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=623735"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}