Armenia heads to polls amid Russian pressure and threat of ‘Ukrainian scenario’

The bottling line at the Abovyan cognac factory in Armenia is running at full tilt. Women in white coats and hairnets work the conveyor with practised speed – labelling, stacking, loading pallets – racing to fill a truck. The spirit’s destination is Russia . But it probably won’t make it there. Last month, Moscow announced a ban on imports from Abovyan, alongside two other leading producers of Armenian cognac – the name under which Armenian brandy is sold in Russia. The official reason for the move was sanitary concerns, but it was widely viewed as political pressure aimed at discouraging the country’s westward tilt ahead of parliamentary elections on Sunday. It was the latest in a long line of recent trade restrictions – affecting everything from flowers and fish to fruit and its famed brandy – that the Kremlin has imposed on a nation of 3 million people that sends roughly 40% of its exports to nearby Russia. Armenian cognac factory. Video: Pjotr Sauer “We just hope this all blows over,” said Samvel Goroyan, Abovyan’s director, in his office on the outskirts of the capital, Yerevan. “All our cognac is sold in Russia, 7m bottles a year,” he shrugged. “We have nowhere else to go.” For most of its post-Soviet existence since 1991, Armenia was Moscow’s closest ally in the South Caucasus, which bridges eastern Europe and west Asia. It hosted Russian troops, bought Russian weapons and integrated with Kremlin-led political and economic structures. …