Russia expects that by the end of 2025, trade turnover between Armenia and Russia will fall by half compared to 2024, which economists suggest is conditioned by the drop in re-exports of Russian gold.
In remarks on Thursday on the sidelines of the Eastern Economic Forum, Russian Deputy Prime Minister Aleksei Overchuk said he expected trade turnover to fall from $12.4 billion in 2024 to around $6 billion this year. Overchuk did not elaborate on the reasons behind the drop.
Russia is Armenia’s largest trade partner, with the trade turnover between the two countries sharply increasing since Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022.
Overchuk has previously blamed the decline in trade to Armenia seeking EU membership, by adopting a bill in March calling on the government to seek EU integration.
The government’s approval of the bill led to a swift and sarcastic reaction from Russia, with Overchuk calling membership in the Eurasian Economy Union (EAEU) a ‘privilege’ and suggested that joining the EU could be ‘compared to buying a ticket for the Titanic’, considering the ‘economic and social problems that the EU is facing’.
Arshaluys Barseghyan
‘The overall decline by the end of the year will obviously be $6 billion. For a country with a GDP of approximately $26 billion, these are very significant figures’, Overchuk stated in June, in an interview with the Russian state-controlled media outlet Vedomosti. ‘And this is only the reaction of Russian business to the Armenian discussion about rapprochement with the EU’
Economists say gold is the main reason
While Russia has connected the trade decline with Armenia’s warming relations with the EU, economists suggest a sharp decline in Armenia’s re-exports of Russian gold were behind the drop.
Armenian exports to Russia declined by 6% in the first seven months of 2025 compared to the same period in 2024, while imports from Russia to Armenia dropped by 64%.
Suren Parsyan, an associate professor at Armenian State University of Economics, told OC Media that in 2024, Armenia was primarily re-exporting Russian gold to the UAE. He said this was because Russia imposed export duties on gold to third countries, but that this did not apply to members of the EAEU. ‘When Armenia imposed a gold export duty in May, and Russia removed it, that scheme was closed for Armenian re-exporters’, Parsayan explained.
After the re-export of gold from Armenia was stopped, the ‘inflated trade figure’ of 2024 ‘naturally couldn’t be sustained’, Parsayan said.
Aside from gold, Parsyan noted that other opportunities for re-exports existed, including of electrical equipment to Russia.
‘If we exclude the trade turnover of electrical equipment, then Armenian–Russian trade turnover would be much smaller than $6 billion. In other words, even a significant part of this $6 billion is not Armenian goods, and this should be understood and assessed, and not be deceived by official figures’.
Mobile Center, a company that imports electrical equipment to Armenia, and according to RFE/RL, re-export many to Russia, is among the top tax-payers in Armenia.
In 2024 an investigation by the Insider and Hetq revealed that Armenian firms were helping Russia bypass a Western embargo on gold trading.
The same investigation noted that ‘some of the largest importers of Russian gold to Armenia in 2024 […] are connected to influential Armenian politicians, oligarchs, and businesses with ties to Russia’.
They mentioned Khachatur Sukiasyan, a prominent MP from the ruling Civil Contract party, whose family ‘is linked to’ the Yerevan Jewelry Factory, ‘the third-largest importer of Russian gold into Armenia’.
Nate Ostiller
