The European Political Community summit in Armenia showed there is room for the country at the table. The harder question is whether it can make that presence durable.
May 11, 2026 –
Grigor Hovhannissian
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Articles and Commentary
Family photo with leaders during the European Political Community (EPC) Summit in Yerevan. Photo: Lauren Hurley / No 10 Downing Street / wikimedia.org
Yerevan has just hosted an unusually dense concentration of geopolitical signals. More than 40 leaders gathered for the European Political Community (EPC) summit, which was followed immediately by the first-ever EU–Armenia bilateral meeting. The European Council President António Costa declared that Armenia belonged “in the heart of Europe”.
Everything from the Iran war to NATO deployments was on the table. But it would also be fair to view this as a major arrival for Armenia in Europe. For locals like me, especially, it was deeply striking to see our small, landlocked country, long embedded in Russia’s orbit, being engaged by Europe so publicly, collectively and warmly.
Yes, we need to put things in perspective. The European Political Community offers no defence guarantees, no binding commitments, no equivalent of NATO’s Article 5. What it provides instead is something more intangible but not meaningless: a form of geopolitical certification. By convening in Yerevan at scale, Europe raises the political cost of coercion against Armenia — even if it does not eliminate the risk. That is not nothing for a country that has endured years of intermittent warfare with Azerbaijan in a generally inhospitable region.
That is because visibility can be a limited form of deterrence. When Moldova hosted the EPC in 2023, it placed itself squarely within Europe’s political field of vision at a moment of acute insecurity. Russian economic and propaganda pressures were enacted to avoid movement toward the European Union. However, Moscow’s efforts failed.
Armenia now appears to be converting the trauma of the 2020 war and the 2023 collapse in Nagorno-Karabakh into diplomatic capital that is translating into similarly visible support.
Armenia is not exactly pivoting neatly from one geopolitical camp to another. It is attempting something far more delicate: to loosen its dependence on Russia while building ties to Europe — without yet having secured the economic, political, or security guarantees that would make such a shift durable.
That pressure has been made explicit. At a recent meeting in the Kremlin, Vladimir Putin warned Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan that Armenia could not deepen integration with the European Union while remaining inside Russia-led economic and security structures. On paper, the statement reads as a technical observation about incompatible regulatory regimes. In practice, it reflects a broader doctrine: the post-Soviet space remains a zone where western engagement is viewed not as competition, but as intrusion.
Does this deepen the rift with Russia? Undeniably. But the rupture did not begin in Yerevan this month. It began when the security architecture Armenia had relied upon for decades failed to perform when it mattered most. Russia’s military presence and its role in organizations such as the Collective Security Treaty Organization were long understood to provide a protective umbrella. Yet in both the 2020 war and the 2023 crisis in Nagorno-Karabakh that umbrella proved unreliable. As Azerbaijani forces moved decisively, Russian peacekeepers stood aside. More than 100,000 ethnic Armenians fled.
So Armenia’s westward turn is not the product of ideological enthusiasm or geopolitical frivolity. It is instead the consequence of disillusionment — a recalibration forced by the collapse of a security model that had promised protection but failed to deliver when Armenia felt most exposed.
This is where Europe enters the picture. The Yerevan summit and the accompanying rhetoric mark a clear step up in engagement. The European Union is positioning itself as a partner not only in economic but political and normative terms — emphasizing multilateralism, democratic resilience, and the rules-based international order. It is also seeking to play a role in regional stabilization, pointing to its involvement in diplomatic processes between Armenia and Azerbaijan.
But Europe’s strength has always been in presence and process, not in coercive power. What it offers Armenia today is legitimacy, assistance where practical, and the promise of deeper integration. What it does not yet offer are the hard guarantees that would allow Armenia to fully absorb the costs of a total reorientation.
This gap between symbolism and structure is the central tension of the current moment. Armenia’s gains in diplomatic presence, institutional ties, and avenues for economic diversification come with risks. This is especially true regarding increased pressure from Russia and potential efforts to stir up domestic instability ahead of elections. In business terms, Armenia is expanding its strategic insurance—but the premium is rising along with the coverage.
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At the same time, the regional environment is becoming more fluid. One of the more striking developments at the summit was the presence of Cevdet Yilmaz — the first high-level Turkish official to visit Armenia in more than a decade. For two neighbours divided by history, closed borders, and the unresolved legacy of the Armenian genocide, this was no small gesture.
Why did Turkey show this flexibility? As regional alignments shift, Ankara has little interest in being excluded from emerging configurations in the South Caucasus. By re-engaging, however cautiously, it signals openness to a recalibrated relationship while preserving its longstanding ties with Azerbaijan.
For Armenia, this creates both opportunity and complexity. A thaw with Turkey could reopen borders and reshape economic geography, potentially transforming Armenia from a peripheral cul-de-sac into a node within broader East–West transit routes linking Europe to Central Asia. But it also introduces new variables into an already delicate balancing act, requiring Yerevan to navigate not only between Russia and Europe, but within its own neighbourhood.
Another shift, quieter but potentially more consequential, is unfolding in the diplomatic framing of Nagorno-Karabakh. Recent signals from the European Parliament suggest a move away from treating the issue solely as a closed question of territorial sovereignty. Instead, there is increasing emphasis on rights: identity, property, cultural heritage, and the possibility — at least in principle — of a safe and dignified return under international guarantees. The same discourse has included calls for the release of Armenian detainees in Baku, including local leader Ruben Vardanyan.
Overall, this represents a diplomatic pathway. By reframing the post-war agenda in terms of rights, protection, and accountability rather than territorial revisionism, Armenia gains access to a language that resonates more strongly in European capitals, and is harder to dismiss outright.
As is often the case in history, geography is central to this story. The South Caucasus sits at a strategic crossroads connecting the Caspian basin to the Black Sea and onward to European markets. As the war in Ukraine has disrupted traditional routes through Russia, alternative corridors have taken on new urgency. New trade routes are actually instruments of strategic diversification — of energy flows, supply chains, and political alignments that reduce dependency on Moscow.
Armenia’s role within this emerging landscape is not yet fixed. Integrated into these networks, it could become a stabilizing link in a broader system. Left out, it risks remaining geographically central but strategically marginal. The decisions made now by Armenia and by its partners will shape that outcome.
And yet, for all the significance of the Yerevan summit, Europe alone may not be able to anchor Armenia’s transition. The United States, though less visible at times, remains the actor with the capacity to provide decisive support — through investment, security cooperation, and the mobilization of political will. Of course, this is also true regarding the TRIPP corridor negotiated in 2024, which would go through Armenia and effectively link Azerbaijan to Turkey.
In this complicated landscape, Armenia is attempting to manage exposure across multiple fronts: maintaining working relations with Russia, deepening ties with Europe, probing normalization with Turkey, and adapting to a shifting regional order. It is a strategy aimed at preserving flexibility in an environment where flexibility is becoming harder to sustain.
And it is also a strategy contested at home. The EPC summit itself has become a point of domestic division — between a government that presents it as historic European validation, and critics who see symbolism without enforceable guarantees, warning that Armenia may be provoking powerful neighbours without securing sufficient protection in return.
And so Armenia finds itself at an especially complex crossroads. The outcome is still not predetermined. It will test whether Europe, and the broader West, can convert engagement into durable alignment. Whether presence can be translated into power.
Grigor Hovhannisian is the former Armenian ambassador to the US and Mexico and Armenia’s former deputy foreign minister.
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Armenia, Armenian foreign policy, Armenian-EU relations, South Caucasus