Russia has to accept a geostrategic setback from the USA. And this in an area that it has viewed as its “backyard” since the collapse of the Soviet Union. Armenia, until recently Moscow’s closest ally in the South Caucasus, on Monday during a visit by US Vice President JD Vance agreed on nuclear cooperation with Washington. Vance traveled to neighboring Azerbaijan on Tuesday to sign similar strategic agreements. Results were not yet available at the time of going to press.
Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan called the nuclear deal a “new chapter” in U.S.-Armenian energy relations. It’s about diversifying his country’s energy balance. Until now, Armenia was completely dependent on Russia.
According to the nuclear deal with Vance, the Metsamor nuclear power plant, built in 1976, will no longer be supplied with fuel rods from the Russian state nuclear company Rosatom, but instead will be supplied with fuel rods worth $5 billion from US companies that will also maintain the old reactor blocks in the future. Washington wants to invest an additional $4 billion in expanding nuclear power in Armenia.
The construction of nuclear power plants is highly political because the design of the reactors ensures that the buyer country is dependent on the supplying state in the long term with regard to the supply of nuclear fuel elements. That’s why energy experts consider Rosatom’s struggle for orders – even well below cost – in countries such as Turkey, Hungary, Kazakhstan and Egypt to be geopolitically driven interest politics.
On the day of Quere
“Rosatom is an important instrument of influence for the Kremlin,” said Stefan Meister, Russia and Central Asia expert at the German Society for Foreign Policy, to taz. Now the USA is getting in Russia’s way: Pashinyan and Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev signed a peace agreement with US President Donald Trump at the White House last August. The treaties with both countries are already being referred to as a “peace dividend” in the USA.
“Armenia and Azerbaijan are geostrategically important for the region, and the Trump administration is simply doing business there too,” said Meister. But: “The Americans are doing things that are significantly hurting the Russians.” The expert on Russia’s foreign policy relations expects that “Russia will massively influence the elections in Armenia in early June in order to get rid of Pashinyan” and maintain Moscow’s influence in the region.
So far, only one country has succeeded in switching the supply of Russian fuel to the Soviet reactors to uranium fuel from the US company Westinghouse: Ukraine.
As there, in Armenia, the termination of Rosatom’s supply of fuel elements is a fundamental geopolitical decision and part of a domestic political power struggle over the direction of the country. On the eve of Vance’s visit to Yerevan, Rosatom representatives met in Moscow with the Chairman of the National Assembly of Armenia, Alen Simonyan.
Moscow Foreign Ministry warns
They offered “comprehensive cooperation” in the field of nuclear energy, news agencies report. The Russian Foreign Ministry warned that there were “no realistic alternatives” for Armenia to further cooperation with Rosatom in the nuclear sector.
Russia had long supported Armenia in the fight against Azerbaijan over the Nagorno-Karabakh region. Since 2023, the region has been fully controlled by Azerbaijan. Russia, which traditionally sees itself as the military protector of Yerevan, did not provide Armenia with any support in taking over the area. Armenia is now also receiving military drones from the USA.