Armenia is heading into national elections in 12 days while its future is being negotiated in a five-way tug of war between Russia, the US, Turkey, Europe and Azerbaijan. The vote is being framed by Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan as a choice between his so-called Real Armenia and a historical Armenia, while the costs of that choice are already being carried by displaced Armenians, prisoners in Baku, and a population living under the pressure of regional power games.
Who Pays for the Deal
The sharpest human cost in the article is the overnight forced displacement of 100,000 Armenians from the enclave of Nagorno-Karabakh after the second of two successive military disasters at the hands of Azerbaijan in 2020 and 2023. Those refugees now live in Yerevan and fear for their heritage. Nineteen prisoners from that war remain captive in Baku, including the region’s first minister, Ruben Vardanyan, who says Pashinyan has abandoned their cause.
The government’s answer is not presented as relief from below, but as a top-down geopolitical redesign. Pashinyan says the opening of borders with Turkey and Azerbaijan could transform Armenia and the South Caucasus, and argues that once peace is secured it would be as if Armenia’s geographical position itself had changed. Ararat Mirzoyan, the foreign minister, said the government’s aim was to turn Armenia’s geography into a strategic asset. He said: “The challenge after decades is how to become a bridge rather than an obstacle. So this is what we are now trying to do in Armenia. Somehow we have come to understand that we can connect Europe with Central Asia, with the far east, with India, China, and this, in turn, can not only be a way to save our existence, our sovereignty, but also guarantee our further peaceful prosperity.”
What the Powerful Call Progress
At the center of this plan is the so-called Trump Route for International Peace and Prosperity, or Tripp, linking Europe and Asia and built across Armenian territory as part of a peace deal with Baku. The article says this geopolitical vision is at the heart of what Pashinyan is offering for his third consecutive term, turning the election into a decision on whether to back Real Armenia or a historical Armenia.
The Real Armenia doctrine requires a painful peace with Azerbaijan and a pivot away from Russia towards the EU, something Pashinyan’s Civil Contract party describes as a more diversified foreign policy. It also comes with symbolic and political controversy: the sacking of the director of the Armenian genocide museum for giving JD Vance a book on Azerbaijan massacres, and the removal from Armenia’s passport stamps of the image of Mount Ararat, a national symbol that lies within present-day Turkey.
Early polls show Civil Contract may be on course to win, despite the party having overseen two successive humiliating military disasters at the hands of Azerbaijan. The election is therefore not unfolding as a clean democratic reset, but as a contest over which external power bloc will shape Armenia’s next move and which communities will absorb the fallout.
The Opposition, the Bosses, and the Arrests
Pashinyan faces at least three pro-Russian nationalist parties, including Stronger Armenia, led by a Russian Armenian multi-billionaire, Samvel Karapetyan, the founder of the Tashir Group, a conglomerate with interests in Russia and ownership of Armenia’s electricity network. Karapetyan is fighting against the terms of the nationalisation of his electricity network, showing how the struggle over Armenia’s future is also a struggle over infrastructure and control.
Karapetyan was arrested last June after remarks that were interpreted as supporting a coup mounted by the Armenian church. He is now running his campaign from what might be described as house, or mansion, arrest and is barred from becoming an MP due to owning Cypriot and Russian passports. Other members of Stronger Armenia have been arrested for allegedly offering bribes.
Last week Karapetyan accused Pashinyan of trying hallucinogenic mushrooms in China and enjoying them so much he imported a ton of them, which he has been consuming before government meetings. Pashinyan says he will sue over the claims. Karapetyan has also promised a Ministry of Sex to address demographic decline.
The campaign is described as wild. Pashinyan, with his near permanent Facebook presence and up-at-5am energy, posts video content ranging from eating pastries to listening impassively to the Russian rock star Zemfira. He has also become embroiled in rows with voters, accusing opposition leaders of being brainless foreign spies and threatening to eliminate them.
Human rights activists, such as Kenneth Roth, the former executive director of Human Rights Watch, have suggested Pashinyan’s populism borders on authoritarianism and questioned whether European leaders such as the French president, Emmanuel Macron, should be showering him with so much support. Karapetyan accuses Pashinyan of betrayal by conceding so much to Azerbaijan and has warned that if the prime minister is re-elected, “we will not become a province of Russia, but a province of Azerbaijan.” His model is clearly Georgian Dream, the pro-Russian group that has held power in Tbilisi since 2012.
Peace, Referendums, and the Limits of Reform
The final hurdle to ratification of the peace agreement initialled in the White House last August is Azerbaijan’s demand that Armenia remove a reference in its constitution to the country’s declaration of independence, a document that includes a call for unification with Nagorno-Karabakh. Armenia says it has already renounced any territorial claims in the initialled peace treaty. Civil Contract says it will rewrite the constitution and aims to put this to a referendum by the end of the year, but it needs a constitutional majority of two-thirds of parliament’s seats. Asked if there is a plan B to secure a referendum, Pashinyan said: “We will not give up. Peace and open borders are the right path for Armenia and the whole region.”
Civil Contract’s chances would be improved if Azerbaijan made concessions ahead of polling day. Yerevan has also been waiting for months for Turkey to reopen its border with Armenia, which has been closed since 1993. The release of some of the 19 Armenian prisoners held in Baku would also affirm Pashinyan’s quiet diplomacy.
Tigran Grigoryan from the Regional Center for Democracy and Security in Yerevan said: “It is very possible they cannot deliver the new constitution and then we have a period of ‘no peace, no war’ for a long time. At the same time, Armenian politics will have become more polarised between a pro-Russian opposition and increasingly authoritarian government.” He questioned how far a weakened Pashinyan could pivot away from Moscow towards Europe without provoking Russian retaliation.
Vladimir Putin recently suggested that Armenia stage a referendum on whether it wants to be a member of the EU or the Russian-led Eurasian Union. The Russian president is raising this issue before the elections, knowing EU membership is still deeply theoretical, to inject a polarising topic to the benefit of the pro-Russian candidates.
So far, Russia has responded only with subtle signals of disapproval of Armenia’s pro-European track, such as banning imports of Jermuk, Armenian mineral water. Grigoryan said a more structural threat to Moscow’s leverage in Armenia and a possible red line would be nationalising the debt-ridden Russian-owned railways. Once less distracted by Ukraine, Putin could end subsidies on cheap Russian gas imports or even turn the taps off altogether.
Macron, who was in Armenia this month for a state visit and a meeting of the European Political Community, accused Russia of treachery not just in Ukraine. Referring to Russia’s failure to come to Armenia’s help at the time of the Nagorno-Karabakh war, he said: “Russia was not there [for Armenia] – no more than it was for Venezuela, Syria or Iran.” Pashinyan even warmly shook the hands of Volodymyr Zelenskyy, and the two men spoke in English, not Russian, in what the article describes as a quiet declaration of independence that infuriated Moscow.
Maria Karapetyan denied that her party’s turn to Europe is a mirage that misleads the electorate. She said: “We are just exiting a paradigm when we were looking to Russia as our saviour. So we are not in a rush to enter a new dynamic thinking that the European Union is going to solve all our needs. My party thinks we do not look for saviours. It’s OK for us that no one wants to save us.”