For centuries, outside powers have competed for control in Armenia, a small South Caucasus nation wedged between Turkey, Iran, and Russia. Armenia’s upcoming parliamentary election is the latest chapter in that struggle.
Last week, U.S. President Donald Trump publicly endorsed Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan ahead of the parliamentary elections in a Truth Social post, reflecting the growing stakes of a race that has drawn unprecedented attention from Washington and Moscow.
More than five years after Armenia’s defeat in the Second Nagorno-Karabakh War with Azerbaijan and two years after the collapse of Nagorno-Karabakh, a satellite state of Yerevan’s that called itself the Republic of Artsakh, voters are being asked to decide not only who governs the country, but whether Armenia continues its turn toward the West or drifts back into Russia’s sphere of influence.
“The West is promoting their interests; Russia is promoting their interests. But where is the Armenian interest?” noted Tevan Poghosyan, a former member of parliament and former representative of the unrecognized Artsakh Republic to the United States, who has been sharply critical of the current government’s record.
Last year, after three decades of Moscow’s failed efforts, the United States stepped in to broker a peace agreement between Armenia and Azerbaijan, ending one of the post-Soviet world’s longest-running conflicts. Washington has also backed the Trump Route for International Peace and Prosperity (TRIPP), a transportation corridor designed to connect Azerbaijan’s mainland to its exclave of Nakhchivan through Armenian territory, continuing onward through Turkey and linking the region to broader East-West trade networks via railway, road, and pipeline infrastructure.
U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio, following U.S. Vice President J.D. Vance’s trip in February, traveled to Yerevan to sign a comprehensive strategic partnership agreement and formally launch implementation of the route.
Trump’s words matter, said Stepan Grigoryan, a Yerevan-based political scientist, but Moscow’s pressure is what people feel in their daily lives. “Russia’s pressure is concrete,” he said. “It’s hitting people in the pocket.”
In recent weeks, Russia has resorted to a common tactic, imposing restrictions on a growing list of Armenian exports—including fruit, vegetables, flowers, wine, brandy, and mineral water. According to Western intelligence assessments and investigative reporting, the Kremlin has devoted an estimated $50 million to influence the election. The operation reportedly combines fake media outlets, coordinated social media networks, and AI-generated content that have spread claims such as that Pashinyan secretly purchased a luxury property in France and plans to bury radioactive waste in Armenia, as well as directing child-trafficking accusations at senior officials.
Reports have also warned Moscow is seeking to mobilize members of the country’s substantial diaspora in Russia, potentially transporting thousands of dual citizens back to Armenia to vote for opposition parties.
The campaign has been accompanied by increasingly direct warnings from the Kremlin. Speaking on Victory Day, when Russia celebrates the Soviet victory over Nazi Germany in World War II, Russian President Vladimir Putin drew parallels between Armenia’s European aspirations and Ukraine’s path toward the West, cautioning that similar geopolitical choices had ultimately led to instability, conflict, and war.
“For three months straight there has been a campaign against the Armenian government on Russian TV channels. Now Putin himself has gotten involved,” Grigoryan said. “And a large number of Armenians with dual citizenship are being sent to Armenia to vote for pro-Russian forces. This is being declared almost openly.”
For decades, Russia was Armenia’s primary security guarantor, maintaining a military base in Gyumri, controlling large segments of the country’s energy infrastructure, and, until recently, overseeing key border crossings with Turkey and Iran through Russian border guards. But after Russia’s failure to prevent Armenia’s crippling defeat in 2020, Pashinyan has gradually sought to loosen that dependence.
Russian guards have been removed from Yerevan’s airport and border checkpoints, though they remain stationed along parts of Armenia’s borders. Armenia has frozen its participation in the Moscow-led Collective Security Treaty Organization and deepened ties with the European Union. In May, Yerevan hosted the first-ever EU-Armenia summit, bringing European leaders to the country in a highly visible show of support for Armenia’s pro-Western trajectory and, by extension, Pashinyan.
Yet the shift has been cautious rather than revolutionary. Yerevan has not left the Eurasian Economic Union; Pashinyan still makes trips to Moscow and flies to Iran to purchase weapons nobody in the West was willing to provide. While Moscow would prefer a friendlier government in Yerevan, Pashinyan has been able to avoid a full rupture.
That has, however, not stopped Moscow from backing the alternatives. Three opposition figures dominate the challenge to Pashinyan. The strongest is Samvel Karapetyan, a Russian Armenian billionaire whose Strong Armenia party has emerged as the main alternative to the ruling Civil Contract. Karapetyan is currently under house arrest after being charged with plotting a coup and calling for the overthrow of the government, accusations he denies.
He is joined by former President Robert Kocharyan, a longtime political heavyweight closely associated with Armenia’s pre-2018 leadership, and businessman Gagik Tsarukyan, whose Prosperous Armenia party has drawn support through its populist economic message.
“You either choose Nikol Pashinyan, who certainly did some good things but made a lot of mistakes, or you choose Russia. That’s the way it is,” Grigoryan noted. “There’s enormous pressure on society, on businesses, so that Nikol Pashinyan is not elected.”
The opposition leaders are careful not to present themselves as pro-Russian. Instead, they wrap their message in the language of a “pro-Armenian” foreign policy, calling for a balance between Russia and the West. While they criticize Moscow for failing to protect Armenia during the Karabakh conflicts, they also argue that Pashinyan has unnecessarily damaged relations with a country that remains Armenia’s largest economic and security partner.
“The pro-Western blame the others for being pro-Russian; the pro-Russian blame the others for being pro-Western—it has been the same in Moldova, Georgia, Ukraine, Armenia, all over the former Soviet Union,” Poghosyan said. “All the political debates are turning into blaming each other, forgetting that we need to discuss Armenian interests. Every Armenian perfectly knows that Russia hasn’t fulfilled its obligations, but the same way, neither did the West.”
Pashinyan remains a clear favorite despite having lost two wars thanks largely to a lack of alternative and the rejection of pro-Russian elites who have presided over corruption and dysfunction of the state over the decades. His rivals have capitalized on public grief over Karabakh, the concessions Pashinyan made to Azerbaijan, and Karabakh prisoners there but struggle to articulate what they would do differently. According to the latest International Republican Institute survey, Pashinyan’s Civil Contract party leads the race with 32 percent support, while Karapetyan’s Strong Armenia trails at 6 percent. Yet nearly half of respondents either remain undecided or declined to reveal their preference, underscoring the uncertainty that still surrounds the June 7 vote.
“The opposition really doesn’t have a positive agenda. The agenda is negative. These guys are bad, we should come and replace them,” said Alexander Iskandaryan, director of the Caucasus Institute in Yerevan. “And then every ordinary citizen asks: OK, guys, what are you going to do? Take Karabakh back? How? There is apathy among the population, and an opposition that is even less popular than Pashinyan.”
Pashinyan’s durability owes much to his personality. Unlike previous officials who dominated Armenia for much of the post-Soviet era, he projects the image of an ordinary Armenian. His social media feeds are filled with videos of him eating pirozhki (dumplings) on public transport, listening to post-Soviet classics, and playing drums while French President Emmanuel Macron sang “La Bohème.”
He can be hot-tempered and blunt, often saying publicly what others prefer to leave unsaid. Those traits have helped him survive political battles that might have ended another career, including a bitter confrontation with the leadership of the highly popular Armenian Apostolic Church.
At the center of his campaign is the idea of a “Real Armenia”—a forward-looking vision that asks voters to accept the loss of territories as a painful reality and focus on what the country can still become. Surveys show growing support for the government’s handling of the refugee crisis created by the exodus of Armenians from Karabakh and a rebound in public confidence about the country’s direction, suggesting that many Armenians may be doing that.
Pashinyan’s Civil Contract is widely expected to come first, but analysts note that alone may not be enough. Under Armenia’s constitution, a party that secures roughly 45 percent of the vote can benefit from a “stable majority” provision that effectively guarantees it a governing majority in parliament. If the Civil Contract falls short of that threshold, however, the combined strength of opposition forces could exceed that of the ruling party, opening the door to post-election coalition negotiations and a potential challenge to Pashinyan’s hold on power.
“If you listen to opposition positions on various issues—Russia, America, Europe—it’s clear they’re pro-Russian. And unfortunately, not just pro-Russian. It seems to me they are simply carrying out the Kremlin’s orders,” Grigoryan explained. “If, God forbid, Nikol Pashinyan loses, all of Trump’s plan, the EU’s plan for Armenia, and the peace plan with Azerbaijan will be completely ruined.”
Pashinyan has made questions of war and peace the defining feature of his campaign. He has cast himself as the only leader capable of completing the peace process with Azerbaijan and normalizing relations with Turkey and, therefore, as the only guarantee against another war. For a country still grappling with the trauma of defeat, the question of peace has eclipsed nearly every other issue on the ballot.
Even with the peace deal with Azerbaijan largely negotiated, the path forward remains difficult. Among the remaining issues are the demarcation of Soviet-era borders—many of them deliberately engineered to keep ethnic and territorial disputes alive—and the Azerbaijani demand for an amendment to the Armenian constitution to remove language Baku interprets as implying territorial claims.
“Pashinyan’s team says, ‘If we will not be elected, you will have a war. We are the party of peace. We are going to continue our relationship with Azerbaijan. We are going to continue signing the agreement with Azerbaijan,’” Iskandaryan said. “‘If not us, you will have war.’ So, as a result, there is a sort of referendum. Are you for peace? Yes or no?”
If elsewhere in Europe a Trump endorsement can be politically toxic, in Armenia it may prove an asset. Russia’s standing has been declining there sharply since the loss of Nagorno-Karabakh, and many Armenians view closer ties with Washington as a source of opportunity. If that translates into votes, it may be a rare victory for Trump that is also a defeat for Putin.
