Figures released by the government’s Statistical Committee show Russian-Armenian trade shrinking by about half, to $6.7 billion in January-November 2025. Russia still accounted for 35.5 percent of Armenia’s overall foreign trade, followed by China (12.5 percent) and the European Union (11.8 percent).
Russian officials repeatedly pointed to the downward trend last summer and fall. One of them, Deputy Prime Minister Alexei Overchuk, said Russian companies are becoming “wary of working with Armenia” amid lingering tensions between Moscow and Yerevan.
Analysts in Yerevan believe that the main reason for the sharp fall in Russian-Armenian trade is that Armenia has stopped being a key conduit for large-scale exports of Russian gold and diamonds to world markets and the United Arab Emirates (UAE) in particular. Armenian exports to the UAE surged more than fivefold in 2024 because of that. They shrank almost as rapidly, to $1.7 billion, in January-November 2025, according to the Statistical Committee.
Separate data from the Armenian customs service similarly shows a fourfold plunge in Armenia’s gold exports in the first half of 2025. Gold produced in the South Caucasus country clearly accounted for a fraction of them.
Russian-Armenian trade had risen dramatically since Russia’s 2022 invasion of Ukraine and the resulting Western sanctions against Moscow. Armenian entrepreneurs have taken advantage of the sanctions by re-exporting many Western-manufactured goods to Russia. The lucrative continued on a large scale last year.
In particular, Armenia exported $332 million worth of mobile phones in the first half. An Armenian company importing and re-exporting most of them became country’s single largest corporate taxpayer during that period, surpassing its largest mining enterprise, key fuel importers and the natural gas distribution network.
Tensions between Moscow and Yerevan have steadily grown in recent years, with Prime Minister Nikol Pashinian seeking to reorient his country towards the West and the EU in particular. Pashinian’s government underlined that dramatic foreign policy change in April 2025 when it enacted a law calling for the “start of a process of Armenia’s accession to the European Union.”
Moscow deplored the move, calling it “the beginning of Armenia’s withdrawal” from the Eurasian Economic Union (EEU). Russian officials have repeatedly warned that Armenia risks losing its tariff-free access to Russia’s vast market and having to pay much more for Russian natural gas and foodstuffs.
Yerevan maintains that it does not intend to leave the EEU. Still, Pashinian stated last summer that Armenia will eventually have to choose between the EU and the Russian-led trade bloc.
