Armenia charts path away from Russia despite Moscow’s threats

Prime Minister Carney unveiled more military aid for Ukraine while attending a summit in Armenia as the first non-EU invitee. Graham Richardson reports.

YEREVAN -- The vast majority of national leaders would have a difficult time surviving elections after overseeing a disastrous lost war and subsequent refugee crisis.

That was not the case for Armenia’s Nikol Pashinyan last week. The incumbent Armenian prime minister stormed to a decisive win in the country’s June 7 national vote, securing just under 50 per cent of the total and cementing a third term with ease.

Pashinyan accomplished this not only despite, but perhaps buoyed by pressure from Armenia’s traditional patron-turned-foe: Russia.

The Kremlin openly backed Pashinyan’s main rival, Russian-Armenian oligarch Samvel Karapetyan, in the leadup to the vote. Vladimir Putin called for Karapetyan, under house arrest in Yerevan since June 2025, to be allowed to run directly despite holding dual citizenship, which barred him from candidacy (his nephew served as the party’s PM candidate instead). Putin also enjoys close relations with Robert Kocharyan, another opposition leader who led Armenia from 1998 to 2008.

Both Karapetyan and Pashinyan enjoyed genuine support from different parts of Armenia’s populace.

At his final campaign rally on June 3, over 10,000 supporters of Karapetyan and his ‘Strong Armenia’ party packed Yerevan’s central Republic Square.

“We need a change from this failure, this traitor running our country,” said Lilit Petrosyan, 23, a college student and Karapetyan supporter. “Pashinyan loves the Turks (a term used to mean both citizens of Turkiye and Azerbaijan) more than his own people,” she said.

‘We can’t rely on Russia anymore’

Pashinyan, for his part, was able to ride a wave of economic growth -- GDP per capita has more than doubled since he took power in 2018 -- with promises of more to come as the country moves closer to the West. A European Union summit held in Yerevan in May, a first in the country’s history, underscored this promise.

The West, for its part, appears eager to court a former Russian ally now moving out of Russia’s orbit – especially as Georgia, long the western darling in the region, has turned sharply away from its pro-western path in recent years.

“I can say that conditions are getting better here,” said Tigran Sargsyan, a 42-year old store owner and Pashinyan supporter in Yerevan. “We can’t rely on Russia anymore - we need better relations with the West.”

For decades following its independence in 1991, Armenia was one of Russia’s most reliable client states. The two had deep military ties, with Armenia hosting major Russian military bases as a hedge against possible aggression from its hostile neighbours, Azerbaijan and Turkiye. In 2013, Armenia decided to forego an agreement with the EU in favour of joining the Eurasian Economic Union (EAEU), the Russian-led rival bloc.

Those ties began to fray in earnest following Armenia’s defeat in a 2020 war against Azerbaijan over the disputed region of Nagorno-Karabakh. They were further eroded by Russia’s failure to come to Armenia’s defence (as mandated by the charter of the Collective Security Treaty Organization [CSTO], the Russian-headed security bloc both countries participate in) during an Azerbaijani offensive in 2022.

The final blow for many was the Azerbaijani conquest of what remained of Nagorno-Karabakh in 2023. Russian peacekeepers -- present in the territory since the 2020 ceasefire agreement, in order to prevent just such an escalation -- stood aside as Azerbaijani troops launched a lightning offensive.

The region’s entire population of more than 100,000 fled to Armenia, leaving Armenians with little faith in Russia’s willingness -- or ability -- to forestall any future conflict with Azerbaijan.

Declining Russian influence

Left with few cards to play, Moscow resorted to thinly veiled threats in an attempt to sway voters against Pashinyan. Russia banned a raft of Armenian imports on supposed sanitary grounds, a tactic previously used against other western-leaning post-Soviet states. The Kremlin further threatened a sharp hike in gas prices, which Armenia presently enjoys at a below-market rate from Russia as a result of its EAEU membership.

These moves had little effect on the vote’s outcome, and their haphazard nature -- imposed just weeks before the vote took place, before any serious economic pain could manifest -- show that Moscow may have been acting reactively, rather than following a real strategy.

“Russian electoral interference and Russian attempts to exert control over the neighbours are not nearly as well calculated and well planned as we often assume,” said Ian Garner, professor of Russian studies at the Warsaw-based Pilecki Institute. “It’s easy to think, given the way that the media analysis discusses Russia, that there is a very strong controlling force in the Kremlin that is planning many moves ahead.

“In reality, Russia tends to respond on the back foot to things that are happening and things that are spiralling out of control,” he said.

The results of the election in Armenia are just the latest example of Moscow’s rapidly declining influence in its near abroad, including the South Caucasus - a region it had dominated for nearly two centuries since the Russian Empire conquered it in the early 1800s.

The grinding war in Ukraine has sapped Russia’s strength and left its military, political and economic power a shadow of what it once was, Garner said.

“The Ukraine war has created a series of cascading effects that has led to a complete erosion of Russian economic and military power in the entire post-Soviet region,” he said. “Russia is now completely subservient to Chinese economic power, as well as reliant on other purchasers of Russian goods. It’s now reliant on states in the post-Soviet space, in particular in Central Asia, for the delivery of the goods and technologies that it needs to prosecute its war effort and to keep its economy functioning,” Garner said.

The collapse of Russian power has left Pashinyan and the current Armenian leadership feeling that they have few choices other than to try and reach an accord with Azerbaijan, despite their decades-long conflict and deep wariness among the Armenian populace of their erstwhile foe.

“In terms of security, Russia has been shown up as toothless,” Garner said. “That’s not just in Ukraine, but also in terms of the CSTO. Russia was either unwilling or unable to support Armenia in the war against Azerbaijan, exposing its status as security guarantor as toothless. Nobody believes that Russia could mount any sort of real security intervention while its troops are wrapped up in a quagmire in Ukraine,” he said.

There is meanwhile little sign of any rapprochement between Armenia and Russia following the election. Moscow enacted further restrictions on Armenian imports on Friday; the Russian-backed Armenian opposition followed by announcing it would not recognize the results of the election, promising “further escalation.”