Pashinian instead blamed third countries who he said had drawn Armenian subjects of the Ottoman Empire into their “international intrigues” during the First World War. And he continued to put the emphasis on the Armenian phrase “Meds Yeghern” (Great Crime), rather than the term “genocide,” in reference to the slaughter of an estimated 1.5 million Armenians.

Pashinian used the term only twice in his 540-word statement issued on the occasion, compared with his five references to the “Meds Yeghern.” U.S. President Donald Trump has cited “Meds Yeghern” to avoid describing the Armenian massacres as genocide in his April 24 statements.

Meanwhile, tens of thousands of Armenians marched to the Tsitsernakabert memorial in Yerevan during the annual remembrance of the genocide victims. The daylong procession followed an official wreath-laying ceremony at the hilltop memorial led by Pashinian.

Catholicos Garegin II, the supreme head of the Armenian Apostolic Church whom Pashinian has been trying to depose, was again excluded from the annual ceremony. Garegin and other top clergymen held a prayer service at Tsitsernakabert later in the morning. Armenian state television did not show the service during its live coverage from the scene.

The genocide began with mass arrests on April 24, 1915 of Armenian intellectuals and activists in Constantinople. Scores of Armenians were massacred or starved to death in the following months and years. About three dozen nations, including Russia, France, Germany and the United States, have recognized the genocide.

“Today we commemorate the victims of the Armenian Genocide of 1915, the Meds Yeghern, and pay tribute to our compatriots who were subjected to massacre, deportation, and starvation in the Ottoman Empire for being Armenians,” read Pashinian’s statement. “The Meds Yeghern is the greatest tragedy that has ever befallen us, and our people have been reliving it for 111 years.”

The statement did not mention the regime of the so-called Young Turks that ruled the crumbling empire at the time. The genocide was a “consequence of the practice of involving the Armenian people in international intrigues,” it said, clearly alluding to the Russian Empire and European powers. Armenia “cannot allow the Meds Yeghern to become a tool for international players to fight against each other,” it stressed.

Pashinian similarly declared in January 2025 that Armenians should “understand what happened” in 1915 and what prompted the subsequent campaign for international recognition of the genocide. He seemed to imply that the decades-long campaign led by the Armenian communities in the United States and Europe was instigated by the Soviet Union.

Armenian historians, opposition figures and retired diplomats expressed outrage at that statement. They accused Pashinian of questioning and even denying the genocide for the sake of pleasing Turkey, which continues to deny a deliberate government effort to exterminate the Ottoman Empire’s Armenian population.

Pashinian also made clear last year that his government will not strive to get more countries and international bodies to recognize the genocide. He questioned the wisdom of relevant resolutions already adopted by many foreign parliaments, saying that they undermine stability in the region.

Armenian opposition leaders again condemned Pashinian’s policy as they marked the genocide anniversary on Friday. They said greater international recognition of the genocide will be back on the Armenian government’s agenda if they defeat the ruling Civil Contract party in upcoming parliamentary elections.

“Armenia’s current leaders are trying to justify the perpetrators of the Armenian Genocide. Moreover, they are trying to equate the victim and the executioner,” charged Samvel Karapetian, a billionaire whose opposition bloc is expected to be Pashinian’s main election challenger.

“Nothing will be forgotten,” said former President Robert Kocharian leading another major opposition force.

—

The two-year mission requested by the Armenian government and approved by EU foreign ministers earlier this week is tasked with helping Yerevan cope with “hybrid threats” emanating from abroad, presumably Russia, before and after the country’s June 7 parliamentary elections.

The Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman, Maria Zakharova, claimed that it will seek to “influence” the election outcome “under the pretext of tracking illicit financial flows and countering cyberattacks, information manipulation and information interference from third countries.”

“A mission that will claim to fight against interference in the affairs of a sovereign state is itself an instrument of such interference,” Zakharova told reporters, according to the TASS news agency.

“We hope that our Armenian allies and friends will not allow the new mission to … draw Yerevan into the West’s geopolitical games which would involve the destruction of friendly ties with our country and joining Brussels’ anti-Russian policy,” she warned.

The EU already decided last month to send a separate “hybrid rapid response team” to Yerevan for the elections. The Armenian government requested the deployment as well after implicitly alleging Russian “hybrid” threats to the integrity of the electoral process. Government officials have not publicly elaborated on those threats.

A similar EU mission was deployed in Moldova ahead of parliamentary elections held there last September. Two Moldovan opposition parties deemed pro-Russian were disqualified from the vote won by the former Soviet republic’s pro-Western leadership. The Russian Foreign Ministry claimed on March 4 that the EU is gearing up for a repeat of “the Moldovan scenario” in Armenia.

Armenia’s leading opposition groups, notably a bloc led by Russian-Armenian billionaire Samvel Karapetian, are concerned that they too could be barred from running in the polls. Russian President Vladimir Putin warned Prime Minister Nikol Pashinian against such bans during their April 1 talks at the Kremlin.

Putin also implied that Armenia will lose its tariff-free access to the Russian market and a significant discount on the price of Russian natural gas imported by it if it keeps seeking to join the EU. Pashinian and his Civil Contract effectively ignored these warnings in their election manifesto published late last week.

Zakharova said the EU has no intention to admit Yerevan in the foreseeable future. The 27-nation bloc is only keen to “turn Armenia into its outpost,” she claimed.

Yerevan is due to host on May 4-5 a first-ever EU-Armenian summit viewed by local analysts as a pre-election show of EU support for Pashinian and his pro-Western foreign policy.

—