The state agricultural watchdog Rosselkhoznadzor announced them late on Wednesday right after the secretary of Russia’s Security Council, Sergei Shoigu, met with other officials in Moscow to discuss the future of Russian-Armenian relations. Shoigu accused Yerevan of siding with the European Union against Russia and taking other hostile actions.
“Moscow cannot accept the line that the Armenian leadership is pursuing today; namely, the line that it will maintain membership in the Eurasian Economic Union (EEU) until, so to speak, it switches to membership in the European Union,” Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Mikhail Galuzin said after the meeting.
Rosselkhoznadzor attributed the restrictions, effective from Friday, to the presence of “quarantined objects” in flowers imported from Armenia. It said they will remain in place pending the findings of an ongoing sanitary inspection of Armenian flower greenhouses.
The Russian government agency already imposed such curbs last summer. Armenia’s Food Safety Inspectorate responded by stepping up sanitary controls and organizing video inspections of flower greenhouses for Rosselkhoznadzor.
The number of such greenhouses across the South Caucasus surpassed 700 flower last year, reflecting soaring flower exports to Russia. According to Rosselkhoznadzor, the physical volume of those exports surged by almost 50 percent to 52 million flowers in January-May 2025.
Russia is also the principal market for other agricultural products as well as alcoholic beverages exported by Armenia. Russian officials emphasize this fact in their warnings about economic consequences of the Armenian government’s European integration drive.
Meeting with Prime Minister Nikol Pashinian in Moscow on April 1, Russian President Vladimir Putin warned that Yerevan can no longer combine that policy with its membership in the EEU guaranteeing Armenian exporters’ tariff-free access to the Russian market.
Later in April, Russian authorities suspended on sanitary grounds sales of Armenia’s most famous brand of mineral water. More than 1.3 million bottles of the water produced by Armenia’s Jermuk Group were reportedly taken off the Russian market pending an ongoing inspection of its quality.