The souring of relations between Moscow and Yerevan took a bit of a literal turn over the weekend when Russia suspended imports of dairy products from Armenia. While Moscow insists its new ban is based on safety concerns, skeptics point at Russia’s long record of using food bans to punish wayward satraps. 

The food fight comes as Armenians question their military alliance with Russia and debate their theoretical obligation under international law to detain Russian President Vladimir Putin, who was recently indicted for war crimes, were he to visit.

Russia’s agriculture regulator, Rosselkhoznadzor, on March 31 said that a recent inspection had shown dairy production in Armenia fails to meet Russian safety standards: “Rosselkhoznadzor requested the veterinary service of Armenia to suspend approval of all dairy products for export to Russia by April 5.” The agency also claimed that Armenian companies were using milk products from neighboring Iran that are banned in Russia on safety grounds. The arrangement, the agency said, has offered Iranian dairy a backdoor into the Eurasian Economic Union, a free trade bloc that Russia shares with a handful of former Soviet neighbors, including Armenia.

Armenia’s food safety inspectorate insists there is no cause for concern. Many in the public were quick to see political motives in Rosselkhoznadzor’ decision.

“If our relations were going smoothly, then such issues would be resolved via internal channels of communications, without any public messages and statements,” Babken Pipoyan, head of a consumer rights group, told Kommersant. 

Russia often picks food fights with its neighbors. In the past, Moscow has embargoed everything from Georgian and Moldovan wine, to Turkish and Lithuanian fruits and vegetables, to all manner of Ukrainian products. Each time, Moscow’s outbursts of phytosanitary concern tend to mirror ups and downs in political relations with the source nations.

The sudden fit of intolerance toward Armenian lactose comes as Yerevan has moved closer toward accepting the authority of The Hague-based International Criminal Court (ICC), which last month issued arrest warrants for Russian President Vladimir Putin and Russia’s state commissioner for children’s rights, Maria Lvova-Belova, for their roles in the forcible deportation of Ukrainian children to Russia, a war crime.

Armenia has been a signatory to the Rome Statute, the ICC’s founding treaty, since 1998, but in an awkward bit of timing, the treaty only gained the blessing of Armenia’s Constitutional Court on March 24 of this year, paving the way for parliamentary approval.

So the March 17 indictments touched off concerns within Armenia about the risks that accepting ICC jurisdiction could bring to relations with Russia, begging the question: Once the ICC has jurisdiction in Armenia, will Armenian authorities be required to arrest Putin should he drop by? Putin regularly visits allies in the former Soviet Union.

In the days leading up to the dairy ban, the Russian Foreign Ministry criticized Armenia’s trajectory toward approving the Rome Statute. A Russian Foreign Ministry source on March 27 warned Armenia of “extremely negative consequences” for engaging with the ICC.

Yerevan has stressed that it seeks only to challenge its archenemy, Azerbaijan, in the world court. The vice speaker of Armenia’s National Assembly, Akop Arshakyan, on April 1, said that Armenia’s movement toward ratification is related solely to Azerbaijan and that it should not be read in any way as an endorsement of the charges against the Russian president.

Arshakyan argued that Armenian authorities could not have predicted the Putin indictment when Armenia’s Constitutional Court began assessing the Rome Statute’s compatibility with the Constitution late last year. He did not directly answer the question whether acceptance of the ICC’s jurisdiction would bind Armenia to seek Putin’s arrest.

Once Russia’s closest ally in the Caucasus, Armenia has cooled toward Moscow since the 2020 Second Karabakh War with Azerbaijan, when Russia did little to support its treaty ally. Armenia has recently declined to take over the rotating position of general secretary of Collective Security Treaty Organization – a post-Soviet military bloc that is Russia’s response to NATO – and declined the organization’s belated offer to send peace monitors to its Azerbaijani border, instead inviting a mission from the European Union over Moscow’s angry objections.

Russian peacekeeping troops inside Nagorno-Karabakh have also come under increasing scrutiny for their inability to stop Azerbaijan’s blockade of ethnic Armenians inside the territory. Locals also accuse the Russians of profiting off the months-long blockade by charging several thousand dollars per truckload of essential goods.

While the dairy ban will be painful for some Armenian farmers, it is mostly symbolic. Of the $32.7 million in dairy products, eggs and honey exported from Armenia in 2022, over 93 percent went to Russia, according to UN data. But that amounted to only 3.8 percent of total Armenian exports to Russia, which are dominated by machinery, raw materials and alcohol. Armenian exports to Russia have roughly tripled since it launched its full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022.