In response to Armenia’s gradual turn towards Europe, Russia has reached for a familiar page in the old Kremlin playbook.
In the run-up to Armenia’s parliamentary election on 7 June, which returned pro-European Nikol Pashinyan to office, Moscow ratcheted up pressure on Yerevan by seeking to make its people poorer. Its target was trade. Overnight Russia banned the import of Armenian flowers, apricots, mineral water, wine, brandy and other agricultural goods, and threatened deeper restrictions if Yerevan had the gall to continue its westward drift.
Moscow presented these measures as the kind of routine sanitary and phytosanitary controls that every country imposes from time to time. In reality, the timing and scale of the restrictions point to something far more political.
For decades, Armenia has relied on Russia. Since the days of the Soviet Union, Moscow has acted as Armenia’s chief security guarantor, its most important trade partner and the dominant external power in the South Caucasus. For a landlocked country in a hostile neighbourhood, the relationship was not merely ideological, it was structural.
That architecture began to crack when Moscow failed to protect ethnic Armenians during the 2023 conflict over Nagorno-Karabakh. This badly damaged its standing in Yerevan; and at the same time the war in Ukraine has weakened Russia’s grip across its near abroad. The latest trade restrictions have underlined Armenians’ belief that Moscow is an unreliable partner that can attack at a moment’s notice.
This is all too familiar across the former Soviet Union. Moldova suffered the same tactics in 2006 and again in 2013 when Russia banned Moldovan wine imports because Chisinau sought closer relations with the EU. Ukraine underwent the same before the Maidan revolution, including restrictions on Roshen, one of the country’s largest confectionery companies.
In each of these cases, the message was simple: move west and there will be consequences for your economy and national security. For Europe, this kind of geopolitical bullying is of course a serious threat to its interests. But for countries inside Russia’s ‘sphere’, it is existential.
Russia will remain a crucial market for Armenian agricultural and agri-food exports for some time yet. In 2025, Armenian exports to Russia were worth around US$3bn, accounting for 35% of its total foreign sales. The volumes affected by the restrictions are substantial: 116,700 tonnes of fruit and vegetables, 7,000 tonnes of fish, 17m litres of mineral water, 15m litres of brandy and 58m flower stems.
Yet the crisis also creates an opportunity for the West. With Moscow trying to narrow Armenia’s economic options, Britain and the EU can help widen them.
The Armenian government has signalled a strong willingness to build stronger commercial bridges with the West. In June, it approved support for exports of fresh fruit, vegetables and flowers to the UK, EU and Canada, including compensation for customs duties paid by exporters in those markets. This builds on an earlier export-promotion programme that identified high-standard Western markets as a priority.
Armenian products are hardly unproven. Its apricots are widely regarded as among the best in the world (indeed, the fruit’s scientific name is Prunus armeniaca). Armenia also has one of the world’s oldest winemaking traditions stretching back 6,000 years.
Its brandy has a mythology all of its own. At Yalta in 1945, Stalin served Armenian Dvin brandy to Winston Churchill. The British prime minister reportedly liked it so much that cases were sent to him each year.
Yet many of these products remain unfamiliar in Britain, partly because Soviet-era trade patterns kept them behind the Iron Curtain. But even before Moscow’s latest restrictions, Armenia’s trade with the UK was growing. Total UK-Armenia trade reached £128m in the four quarters to Q4 2025, up 37.6% on the previous year, despite UK imports from Armenia lagging at just £25m.
This points to the potential of a currently underdeveloped relationship. If the UK wants to capitalise on Armenia’s westward turn by opening a new market for British importers, it will need to find practical ways to turn diplomatic goodwill into genuine commercial support.
Happily, a brand new UK-Armenia Strategic Partnership was announced earlier this year. The agreement facilitates a trade diversification track for Armenian food and drink products. It would require three practical steps: identifying export-ready producers, helping them meet UK standards, and connecting them directly with British buyers.
Alongside this, the Department for Business and Trade could convene a UK-Armenia buyer forum, bringing together British wholesalers, retailers, importers and hospitality groups with Armenian producers of wine, brandy, fruit, mineral water and flowers. Follow-up buyer missions to Yerevan, supported by the embassy and chambers of commerce, could then turn these introductions into contracts.
The UK would be following other European countries in helping to absorb Armenian exports displaced by Russia’s restrictions. The EU is supporting routes for Armenian flowers into Latvia and the Netherlands. It has announced an initial €50m support package to help Armenia withstand Russia’s “economic coercion”. Britain can do the same, particularly in categories such as flowers, fruit, mineral water, wine and brandy.
There is an opportunity for UK retailers, wholesalers and hospitality groups to access a whole new market for high-quality products with export capacity and a strong national story. For the UK government, it is an opportunity to support a small democracy and establish a valuable trade route for Britain.
Moscow intended its import squeeze to narrow Armenia’s options. However, it could instead have helped turn the page on Armenia’s next export chapter, and give the UK a meaningful role in writing it.
