Yerevan /Mediamax/. Head of the Program for International Order and Democracy at the German Council on Foreign Relations (DGAP) Stefan Meister believes that the EU needs to help Armenia to preserve its sovereignty.

He wrote about it in “A Paradigm Shift: EU-Russia Relations After the War in Ukraine” article.

“The EU needs to be more engaged and impose stronger conditionality to prevent Georgia, from drifting away from Europe and to help Armenia preserve its sovereignty and stay on its path of democratization and reform,” the expert believes.

“Russia needs to be managed as a major global security risk. The war against Ukraine accelerates the disintegration of the post-Soviet space, which is both a danger and an opportunity for the EU. Russia can no longer provide authoritarian stability in the region, as can be seen in the South Caucasus since the 2020 Nagorno-Karabakh war between Armenia and Azerbaijan. There, Azerbaijan used its military superiority, supported by NATO member Turkey, to press Armenia into a so-called authoritarian peace,” Stefan Meister writes.

He notes that with the Russian war against Ukraine, the EU’s neighborhood and enlargement policies need an upgrade.

“The EU requires a strategy to strengthen its role and goals in Eastern Europe, the Western Balkans, the South Caucasus, and the Black Sea region,” the expert stresses.