‘They are stealing the election’: How Armenia became the next Russia-EU battlefield
Armenians are set to head to the polls in June for their parliamentary elections, which the EU and Russia are closely watching. With support for joining the bloc at an all-time high, this could be a sign that the former Soviet country is moving away from Moscow, one of its closest allies. But foreign interference from both sides could result in the election being stolen from the Armenian people, according to some observers.
The European Union breathed a sigh of relief last week when
Hungary voted out Prime Minister Viktor Orban in favour of Peter Magyar.
Like Moldova’s election last year, the vote was seen as an ideological battleground between the Kremlin and
Orban, a long-standing ally of Russian President Vladimir Putin, will be replaced by Magyar, who said he wants to repair ties with the EU. “Hungary has chosen Europe,”
President Ursula von der Leyen said after the results were announced.
Now the bloc’s attention is shifting further east towards another former Soviet Union
country seen to be making a similar choice: Armenia.
But this could have long-lasting consequences for the Armenian people, according to some observers.
A step towards Europe
The June 7 parliamentary
elections in Armenia matter for Europe, as public opinion in the country – long aligned with Russia – is now turning toward Brussels.
While campaigning officially begins 30 days before the election, candidates have already hit the trail.
The current front-runner in the polls is Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan, the head of the political party Civil Contract.
He came to power in 2018 after being elected in the wake of the Velvet Revolution, a series of anti-government protests. He is seeking reelection on a pro-European campaign.
One of his strongest opponents is Samvel Karapetyan, the Russian-Armenian billionaire who leads the Strong Armenia party. In 2025, he was arrested with 13 others on suspicion of attempting to destabilise the government.
But there are also a handful of other pro-European candidates, said Eric Hacopian, a political analyst at CivilNet, who points to such figures as Hayk Marutyan, the former mayor of Yerevan.
“This is a very interesting election because … you see the creation of a non-old regime, pro-Western opposition,” Hacopian said.
“And if they can actually make a breakthrough and enter the parliament, it will change our political system in a way that it hasn’t been changed since the 2018 revolution.”
Armenia’s changing relationship with Russia
Yerevan’s ties with Moscow
have weakened since 2023,
when nearly 100,000 ethnic Armenians fled Nagorno-
Karabakh following
Azerbaijan’s takeover of the region.
Yerevan accused Russian peacekeepers who were deployed to the enclave, previously controlled by
Armenians, of failing to stop Baku’s military campaign.
Armenia has since suspended its membership of the Russian-led Collective Security Treaty Organisation (CSTO), which, like NATO, has a clause on mutual protection for its members.
“That scar is going to haunt this region for decades to come, no matter how much they try to bury it,” Hacopian said, referring to the nationwide mourning after the loss of Nagorno-Karabakh.
However, Yerevan is still an active member of the Eurasian Economic Union, which, like the EU, allows the freedom of movement of labour, goods and capital across its member states: Russia, Armenia,
Belarus, Kazakhstan and
Russia also maintains a military base in Gyumri, Armenia’s second-largest city, and Russian remains widely spoken.
Security concerns
Because of Nagorno-Karabakh, Russia is no longer seen as a strong protector against Armenia’s neighbors,
Azerbaijan and Turkey.
Pashinyan has suggested that his party losing the election could lead to more war.
And one of the reasons why Armenian politicians are courting the bloc is that it is associated with “security and prosperity”, according to Steve Nix, the International Republican Institute (IRI)’s senior director for Europe and Eurasia.
In a poll conducted by the IRI in February 2026, 72% of Armenians now support joining the European Union.
“The EU is very appealing,” Nix said. “So whatever campaign can convince the Armenian public that they can guarantee peace, prosperity and EU membership … That’s the message that’s gonna win over Armenia.”
In the same IRI poll, 29% of Armenians said that they saw Russia as the country’s greatest political threat, while only three percent said it was the European Union.
However, 43% of respondents said Moscow was Yerevan’s most important political partner.
Strong Armenia is trying to court this base, warning that Armenia could see an “economic war” with Russia if Pashinyan’s party stays in power.
Earlier this month, Putin told Armenia that it cannot be a part of both the Moscow-led economic alliance and the European Union.
Brussels is also getting involved in the election. In December of last year, the EU’s foreign policy chief Kaja Kallas also said that Armenia had asked the bloc for help.
“Armenia has elections coming, and what can we do to help them? They have asked for similar help to fight the malign influence, like we granted to Moldova,” Kallas said.
While the “malign influence” wasn’t specified in her statement, Marta Kos, the European Commissioner for Enlargement, told the Parliament Magazine in an interview that Russian interference in the election was “already happening”.
From May 4 to 5, the bloc will host its first-ever EU-Armenia summit, where Pashinyan will represent Armenia alongside von der Leyen and Antonio Costa, the president of the European Council.
‘Stealing the election’
However, this potential ideological push and pull between Moscow and the West, including Brussels and the United States, is causing alarm to some observers, notably the International Observatory for Democracy in Armenia (IODA).
The organization was established to monitor the democratic conditions ahead of the elections in June, and is made up of international
experts.
“We can see from the statements of both the West and Russia that they are trying to make their own choice, and this is not acceptable,” Philippe Kalfayan, an executive board member of the IODA, said.
“They are stealing the election from the Armenian citizens,
and they are putting a lot of money on the table for that.”
One example of this, according to Kalfayan, is the above-mentioned EU-Armenia summit, which he said can signify to the public that the bloc supports Pashinyan, as it comes just a couple of weeks ahead of the election.
Politicians are also “weaponizing” claims that certain parties and political actors are associated with Russia, Sarah Leah Whitson, a human-rights lawyer and member of IODA, said.
“The government is drumming up anxieties about Russian influence or what might happen from Russia – because they know that will encourage further support, financial or otherwise, from the EU and the US.”
And according to Kalfayan, “the current government has a very good relationship with Russia. Of course, (Moscow) would prefer somebody else less aggressive toward them.”
“But in the end, any Armenian government from whatever political party is obliged to have a good relationship with Russia.”
