Armenia: a vote under the sign of geopolitics

The legislative elections, which were held on June 7 in Armenia (where most of the power is in the hands of the prime minister, the president playing an essentially ceremonial role), ended in the victory of the party of outgoing Prime Minister Nikol Pashinian, who therefore remains at the head of a country still traumatized by the recent capture of Nagorno-Karabakh by Azerbaijan. The two main opposition parties, known to be pro-Russian, will also be represented in Parliament.

The pro-European orientation initiated by Pashinian is confirmed, but its extent will be limited: Armenia, whether it likes it or not, remains largely dependent on Russia, explains in this interview Anita Khachaturova, specialist on Armenia at the Free University of Brussels.

The Conversation: What are the main lessons from the legislative elections?

Anita Khachaturova : Civil Contract, the party of Prime Minister Nikol Pachinian, in office since 2018, came in first with 49.8% of the votes. Two main opposition groups also enter Parliament; This required obtaining at least 4% of the vote for a single party and 8% for an alliance of parties: Strong Armenia, led by billionaire Samvel Karapetyan, with around 23%, and the alliance of former president Robert Kocharian, around 10%.

Participation reached almost 59%, an exceptionally high level for Armenia. Projections predicted significantly lower turnout due to the apathy that has characterized Armenian society in recent years. This mobilization explains the significant scores obtained by the opposition, which hoped to get voters who had hitherto been demobilized or undecided to vote.

However, one question remains unanswered at this stage: that of the possible entry into Parliament of the Prosperous Armenia party, which missed the required threshold by only a few hundredths of a point. This detail could have important institutional consequences.

Does Pachinian emerge from the vote strengthened?

A. K. : Not really. He retains power and can form a government alone, but he is less strong than before. In the previous Parliament, his party had 71 seats out of 107, a very large majority. Today, it should obtain between 61 and 64 seats, depending on whether or not the Prosperous Armenia party enters.

The difference is essential: the outgoing head of government risks losing the qualified majority which allowed him to adopt certain constitutional laws or to make important appointments within judicial and administrative institutions.

In any case, this endangers the draft new Constitution, which was one of the major axes of his campaign.

What does he want to change in the Constitution? Is it a question of officially abandoning all Armenian claims to Nagorno-Karabakh?

A. K. : It’s more subtle. The Armenian Constitution does not directly mention Nagorno-Karabakh. On the other hand, its preamble refers to the 1990 Declaration of Independence which contains a reference to Karabakh.

Azerbaijan considers this reference to be incompatible with the signing of a definitive peace treaty and makes its deletion a precondition for the normalization of relations between the two states.

Pashinian affirms that his constitutional reform project responds to an internal logic of institutional modernization. However, in reality, this process is closely linked to the negotiations with Azerbaijan. The Prime Minister also warned voters during his campaign, affirming that if he was not re-elected with a constitutional majority, that is to say two-thirds of the mandates, we should expect a war in September.

To change the Constitution, a referendum must be organized. However, the legal conditions are particularly demanding. Without a two-thirds majority in Parliament, Nikol Pashinian will not be able to carry out this project.

Can we summarize this election as a choice between Russia and the West?

A. K. : This is the way this election was presented in the international press, but it is more complicated than that. Armenia has always had to pursue a multilateral policy due to its complex geography and conflicts with its Azerbaijani and Turkish neighbors. Before Nikol Pashinian, we were talking about a “policy of complementarity” aimed at reconciling taking into account the interests of the Russian ally and maintaining good relations both with the West and with Iran. However, since Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022, the deep rift between Russia and Western countries has changed this dynamic. Russia’s influence in the region has seen a definitive decline.

Since the Azerbaijani offensive in September 2022 – which resulted in the occupation of more than 200 square kilometers of sovereign Armenian territory – and the siege and then capture of Nagorno-Karabakh the following year, Russia has revealed an unreliable ally for Armenia. Russia’s popularity in Armenia has plummeted.

Pashinian has gradually initiated a policy of strategic diversification and rapprochement with the European Union and the United States, but also with other non-Western countries, such as India. This reorientation, which is intended to be demonstrative in favor of Europe, often accompanied by virulent language, has caused him to be accused by certain fringes of the opposition and the diaspora of compromising Armenia’s security. This divide was further exacerbated during the electoral campaign: Pashinian accuses all opposition of being in the hands of the Kremlin, while the groups known to be pro-Russian and their supporters accuse him of being in the pay of Turkey and Azerbaijan.

However, Armenian political life should not be reduced to this opposition alone. Nineteen parties took part in the vote. Several small groups, critical of both the Pashinian government and pro-Russian oligarchic figures, defended a democratic agenda. However, they failed to cross the electoral thresholds, which produced a Parliament that was even more polarized than before.

All this does not contribute to the emergence of a healthy and constructive debate on the future of Armenia. We note, moreover, that the opinion surveys do not reveal a polarization around geopolitical orientation, but rather show that Armenians give priority to socio-economic and security issues, which very often remain on the margins of each other’s political agendas.

Did foreign powers try to influence the vote?

A. K. : Yes, and very visibly. On the Western side, several signals were interpreted as support for Pashinian. European officials increased the number of meetings with the Armenian authorities during the campaign. Two European summits were held in May in Armenia in the space of a week, at the beginning of May: the eighth summit of the European Political Community then the EU-Armenia summit, also in the presence of Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky.

If, in France, we have often highlighted the sequence where, on the sidelines of this summit, Emmanuel Macron sang La Bohemeby Charles Aznavour, accompanied by Nikol Pachinian on drums, the organization at that time of such a meeting in Yerevan clearly signaled support for Pashinian’s candidacy.

The United States has also shown its political support for the Armenian government. Secretary of State Marco Rubio visited the site shortly before the vote and Donald Trump called for a vote in favor of Pashinian.

On the Russian side, the methods were more coercive. Moscow exerted economic pressure, particularly on certain Armenian exports, and accompanied the campaign with influence and disinformation operations in favor of Samvel Karapetyan, a billionaire with Russian nationality.

Azerbaijan has also issued threats to Armenian voters in case they choose to vote in favor of the opposition.

In short, this is probably the most geopolitical election in Armenia’s recent history.

After this election, should we talk about a definitive shift from Yerevan to the West?

A. K. : That would be an exaggeration. Armenia remains very dependent on Russia on the energy, economic and commercial levels. This dependence has even strengthened since the start of the war in Ukraine, in particular because of financial and human flows from Russia, and also because Armenia was used by Russia to supply itself with certain goods placed under Western sanctions. Obviously, Armenia is still formally part of the collective security treaty, the CSTO, dominated by Russia, although its participation is frozen, and maintains a Russian military base on its territory.

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Pashinian, as I said, adopted during the campaign a very ambitious speech on rapprochement with the EU but, despite the enthusiasm of everyone, both in Brussels and in Yerevan, everyone understands the reality of Armenia’s structural dependence on Russia and the advantages it derives from its participation in the Union Eurasian. The EU cannot, at this stage, replace Russia in a lasting manner, any more than it can counter the economic pressures that the latter could exert on Yerevan. It is therefore likely that following these elections Pashinian will find a more pragmatic tone towards Moscow.

Russia, despite its reluctance to recognize the outcome of the vote – there has still been no official declaration to this effect – did not seriously consider the prospect of an opposition victory. Despite the asymmetry of this relationship, Russia also has no interest in pushing the Armenian government to its limits by strengthening sanctions. It would risk definitively compromising its ties with Armenia, which would further weaken it in the region.

Much has been said about Armenians coming en masse from Russia to vote, supposedly in favor of Karapetyan…

A. K. : Let us first remember that the Armenian diaspora is considerable: around 8 million to 10 million people live abroad, compared to around 3 million inhabitants in Armenia itself. The main diasporic hubs are Russia, the United States and France. However, the Armenian system has a particularity: citizens living abroad cannot vote from their country of residence. They must move to Armenia.

Calls for mobilization have indeed circulated within the Russian diaspora, but there is nothing to confirm that this had a decisive impact on the result.

Why is the United States so interested in the Armenian-Azerbaijani issue?

A. K. : The main issue is the question of the corridor linking Azerbaijan to its exclave of Nakhchivan via southern Armenia.

This project has its origins in the ceasefire agreement of November 2020. At the time, the security of the corridor had to be ensured by Russia.

After the disappearance of Armenian Nagorno-Karabakh in 2023, this formula became politically unacceptable for Yerevan, while Azerbaijan continued to demand extraterritorial passage.

The United States then proposed a new supervision mechanism, presented during the negotiations organized in Washington in 2025. This project, nicknamed “the Trump road for peace and international security”, aims to unblock communications regional and to facilitate normalization between Armenia, Azerbaijan and Turkey, by granting rights to the United States for the development and control of the route, while formally preserving Armenia’s sovereignty over this territory.

However, its implementation still depends on the signing of a peace treaty between Yerevan and Baku. And this corridor runs along Iran. However, Tehran takes a dim view of any development likely to sustainably strengthen American influence in the South Caucasus, especially in view of the current context where the United States and Israel, a military ally of Azerbaijan, are at war with Iran.

Were the electoral campaign and the vote perfectly democratic?

A. K. : The opposition is contesting the results, having spent the campaign contesting Karapetyan’s placement under house arrest, but international observers have not noted any major irregularities in the conduct of the vote. However, several developments are worrying.

For several years, the practices of the Armenian government towards its opponents have demonstrated a democratic decline. These are often justified in the name of the necessary fight against Russian influence. In fact, this consolidated the government’s control over the judiciary, which initiated a number of controversial prosecutions against members of the clergy, bloggers or opponents.

After the loss of Nagorno-Karabakh, Armenian refugees are also regularly targeted by the Prime Minister and his entourage, who make them scapegoats for the corruption that characterized previous governments and a fifth column of Russia. These speeches often lapse into stigma or, as some observers point out, into hate speech.

During the legislative campaign, Pashinian even made it his spearhead, by staging his outbursts of anger against the nationals of Karabakh or any other person accusing him of his responsibility for the loss of the region. He called the refugees “runaways”, imitating their accent in a denigrating manner and uttering threats: this aggressive style, which certainly arouses the approval of part of his electorate, probably did him a disservice.

More recently, the arrest of an activist from Nagorno-Karabakh, known for his anti-corruption commitment and unrelated to Russia, sparked widespread criticism within civil society.

These developments jeopardize the democratic promise formulated since the Velvet Revolution of 2018, but Armenian civil society still has potential for mobilization, and it will be a question of being vigilant about its ability to face the challenges posed by both a government which increasingly encroaches on the counter-powers and by a parliamentary opposition which does not offer a democratic path. Through my own observations and in view of various opinion polls, it appears that Armenians are demanding a third way.

Comments collected by Grégory Rayko.