This commentary was prepared by Mr Narek Minasyan for the 8th issue of the Armenia Election Monitor 2026 newsletter.

Less than a week remains until Armenia’s parliamentary elections. The campaign is in full swing, political forces are attacking one another in increasingly harsh terms, investigations into hybrid attacks against Armenia appear almost daily, and statements interfering in Armenia’s internal affairs continue to come from Moscow.

The June 7 elections are arguably the most geopolitically significant in Armenia’s modern history. Their outcome will shape the country’s trajectory for years. Campaign narratives suggest that Armenian voters will effectively answer several strategic questions: whether to continue normalization with Azerbaijan and Turkey or revise existing understandings; whether to deepen ties with the EU or strengthen dependence on Russia; whether to continue democratic reforms or return figures associated with the previous political system.

According to an IRI survey conducted in mid-May, Armenians’ top concerns are national security and border issues, the economy and unemployment, and peace. Unsurprisingly, the Armenia–Azerbaijan normalization process has become the central issue of the campaign. Against this backdrop, political and expert circles are again debating the idea of “guaranteed peace” and international security guarantees.

The debate is not new. Since the launch of peace treaty negotiations in 2022, the Armenian government has repeatedly emphasized the need for “international support” and “international legitimacy.” At the time, negotiations were mediated simultaneously by the EU, Russia, and the United States, while Nagorno-Karabakh had not yet been emptied of its Armenian population.

However, after the involuntary displacement of Nagorno-Karabakh’s Armenians amid the inaction of Russian peacekeepers and the weak international response, official Yerevan gradually revised its approach. The idea of external guarantors increasingly appeared unrealistic, and the negotiation process became more bilateral in nature.

Today, the ruling “Civil Contract” party argues that peace has effectively been established and is now entering a phase of institutionalization. According to this view, lasting peace depends less on outside guarantees than on creating a mutually beneficial system between the parties.

Opposition forces, likely to cross the electoral threshold, argue the opposite. Former president Robert Kocharyan has stated: “Peace does not depend on Nikol Pashinyan, Civil Contract members, Robert Kocharyan, Trump, or anyone else. Guaranteed peace means the application of international mechanisms, beyond Aliyev’s will,” Kocharyan stated.

Narek Karapetyan of the “Strong Armenia” party argues: “Our peace treaty must have more than one guarantor. Having more than one guarantor is the only serious guarantee of long-term peace. Paper is a highly variable thing in negotiations with the Turks, while guarantors are constant,” Karapetyan said.

Gagik Tsarukyan, leader of the “Prosperous Armenia” party, has emphasized: “All the preconditions exist. We need to reach agreements with 3–5 powerful states. There must be connections, familiarity, and relationships in order to have guaranteed peace, so that not even a fly can pass through our territory,” Tsarukyan emphasized.

Yet these forces present the idea of “international guarantees” largely without specifics. No detailed roadmap has been proposed explaining how such guarantees would function in practice, what mechanisms would enforce them, or how violations would be punished. In many cases, arguments rely more on references to political connections or negotiating skills than on concrete institutional proposals.

Without entering the election debate itself, the issue of international guarantees nevertheless deserves sober analysis. History offers examples where external guarantees contributed to stabilization and trust-building, such as in Cyprus or Bosnia and Herzegovina. But there are also notable failures — from Srebrenica to Syria. Perhaps the clearest example is the 1994 Budapest Memorandum, under which Ukraine surrendered its nuclear arsenal in exchange for security assurances from Russia, the United States, and the United Kingdom. Two decades later, Russia violated those commitments and launched a full-scale war against Ukraine.

Peace agreements do not function in a vacuum. Their durability depends on the broader balance of power and the state of international relations. The key question, therefore, is not whether international guarantees are desirable in theory, but whether they are realistic under current geopolitical conditions.

Several factors complicate the discussion.

First, the post–World War II international order is steadily eroding. Principles such as territorial integrity and the non-use of force have repeatedly been violated without effective collective response — in Armenia, Ukraine, Syria, and elsewhere. Under such conditions, reliance on external guarantees has obvious limits.

Second, advocates of “guaranteed peace” rarely explain how such a system would operate. Under what mandate would guarantors act? What mechanisms would enforce compliance? What happens if guarantors fail to fulfill their commitments? Without answers, discussions about guarantees risk becoming political slogans rather than policy proposals.

Third, the question of potential guarantors remains unresolved. Russia, the United States, the EU, and even China are sometimes mentioned, but involving multiple guarantors is difficult even theoretically amid rising global tensions. There is also a risk of repeating the experience of the OSCE Minsk Group, whose effectiveness was ultimately paralyzed by geopolitical rivalries.

In practice, apart from Russia, no major power has expressed readiness to assume a direct guarantor role in the Armenia–Azerbaijan process. Yet Moscow’s credibility as an impartial guarantor has been seriously undermined by recent developments and by its increasingly visible preference for Azerbaijan, driven by Baku’s greater geopolitical and economic importance.

Finally, one essential reality is often overlooked in Armenian debates: a peace treaty is a bilateral agreement. If Azerbaijan rejects external involvement, international guarantees cannot become a reality. Baku’s recent rhetoric strongly suggests opposition to any third-party role. Moreover, if Armenia attempts after June 7 to reintroduce the issue of guarantors, Azerbaijan may interpret it as an attempt to revise already agreed principles and derail the process itself.

Under current global conditions, the classical model of “international guarantees” functions only in a very limited way. Rather than pursuing externally guaranteed peace, it may be more realistic to focus on confidence-building measures, monitoring mechanisms, and direct reciprocal obligations capable of making renewed conflict increasingly costly for both sides.

Source: Mr Narek Minasyan is an associate expert at the Armenian Council, where he focuses on global and regional security issues.  

https://www.commonspace.eu/commentary/armenia-crossroads-elections-peace-and-limits-international-guarantees

Armenians will vote on June 7 to decide if Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan and his Civil Contract party should extend their eight years in power. Seen as the pro-West, pro-European option, a victory for Pashinyan is likely to deepen Yerevan’s ties with the West and shift it away from Russia.

The premier has “framed his campaign around a peace agenda, presenting Armenia as a country moving toward normalized relations with Azerbaijan and Turkey while deepening cooperation with the US and the European Union,” said Professor Emil Avdaliani, a research fellow at the Turan Research Center. “Government figures say an opposition victory could increase the risk of renewed conflict with Azerbaijan.” 

And that conflict weighs heavily on the race. It is the first national election since the traumatic loss of Nagorno-Karabakh to Azerbaijan in 2023, after more than three decades of on-and-off conflict. It was an event that sent shockwaves through the country and prompted around 100,000 Armenian residents of the territory to flee to Armenia.

There were protests on the streets of Yerevan demanding the prime minister’s resignation and accusing him of failing to protect the enclave’s ethnic Armenians. But, while some voters remain angry at Pashinyan’s role in events, they also know Moscow did nothing to help, either in 2023 or before that in 2020, despite its (disputed) treaty commitment to aid Armenia in a conflict.

Nagorno-Karabakh, known as Artsakh to Armenians and an ancient territory of their history, was part of the Azerbaijani SSR during the Soviet era. It automatically became part of the newly independent Azerbaijan when the Caucasus gained independence in 1991.

Armenia then took control — though not legal possession — in 1993 during the First Nagorno-Karabakh War. That held until September 2023, when Azerbaijan seized the territory by force. Moscow offered no help and criticized Armenia, blaming the loss on Yerevan’s turn to the West and its increasingly provocative behavior toward Russia.

June’s election will provide an opportunity for voters to register their judgment on Pashinyan’s handling of the events of 2023 and Armenia’s international ties.

While Yerevan’s cooperation with the EU has increased since 2020, the majority of voters “favor pragmatic engagement with both the West and Moscow,” the German Marshall Fund said in a briefing.

Pashinyan and his party have argued that reduced dependence on Russia, diversified foreign partnerships, and closer ties to the EU will strengthen Armenia’s independence and sovereignty. That shift was underlined by events in early May, when European leaders held two high-level meetings in Yerevan.

“The deterioration of relations with Russia has unsettled many Armenians, who still view Moscow as Armenia’s principal security provider,” Avdaliani said. However, Civil Contract’s position as the party of peace with Azerbaijan has “practical appeal in a region already shaped by multiple wars and security shocks,” he added.

Strong Armenia, the main opposition party led by Samvel Karapetyan, a Russian-Armenian billionaire, has portrayed the election as a struggle between pro-Western and pro-Russian camps. Pashinyan has avoided presenting the vote as a referendum on Armenia’s tilt to the West, but polling shows it is on voters’ minds.

“Nearly 73% of Civil Contract supporters identify as Western-leaning, while a similar share of Strong Armenia supporters describe themselves as pro-Russian,” Avdaliani said. But many Armenians have “not forgotten or forgiven Russia’s dismissal of its appeals for help during and after the second Nagorno-Karabakh war,” he added.

A poll in April showed 33.6% backing Pashinyan’s Civil Contract, with 11.4% saying they would vote for Strong Armenia. A further 15% of votes were spread across other opposition parties, while 34% refused to answer and 14% said they didn’t know which party they would back.

Pashinyan looks likely to be helped by the fragmentation of the opposition vote. The survey’s finding that 41% believe Armenia is heading in the right direction, compared to 33% who think it is not, should also work in his favor.

But the massive 48% of voters who haven’t yet decided or wouldn’t say how they will vote will be keenly courted by both sides in the closing weeks of the campaign. They will also be targeted by voices from Moscow and Brussels. (Whether many bother to vote is another issue — turnout in the 2021 election was just 49%).

While Nagorno-Karabakh makes the election more complex than simply a decision over which direction the country should lean (all elections are local, after all), it is the bottom line of their two choices, Russia or the West, a recurring theme among Russia’s neighbors.

Nicole Monette is a CEPA Editorial Intern and a graduate of New York University with master’s degrees in journalism and European & Mediterranean Studies.

Europe’s Edge is CEPA’s online journal covering critical topics on the foreign policy docket across Europe and North America. All opinions expressed on Europe’s Edge are those of the author alone and may not represent those of the institutions they represent or the Center for European Policy Analysis. CEPA maintains a strict intellectual independence policy across all its projects and publications.

https://cepa.org/article/armenias-east-west-choice-and-the-shadow-of-war/

Georgia’s transit monopoly is eroding, yet the region’s future may largely depend on cooperation, not competition

For decades, Georgia operated as a solid transit route, largely due to its location, as well as pure luck. Unresolved neighbourhood conflicts, leading to closed borders, and weak infrastructure elsewhere left little alternative: goods moving between Central Asia, Russia, Turkey, and Europe passed through Georgian roads, railways, and ports almost by default.

Yet now, as new corridors, a fragile Armenia–Azerbaijan peace process, and disruptions through Iran are reshaping logistics across the region, Georgia’s role is changing. The question is no longer who controls regional transit, but whether the region’s smaller states can coordinate well enough to compete at all.

While the shift is unlikely to eliminate Georgia’s importance, it threatens the passive advantages on which its transit dominance has long depended. The question facing Tbilisi is therefore strategic rather than existential: can Georgia remain the South Caucasus’ preferred corridor once it is no longer the only viable one?

Shifting cargo flows

Despite the concern, at a recent regional transport conference in Yerevan, many analysts argued that predictions Georgia would ‘lose everything’ were exaggerated. In many ways, geography, infrastructure, and existing trade networks still strongly favour Georgia over its neighbours. Yet some cargo flows are already beginning to shift.

Armenia imports 400,000–450,000 tonnes of grain annually from Russia, shipments that have increasingly begun moving through Azerbaijan’s rail network, bypassing Georgia’s Upper Lars corridor (though still travelling briefly through Georgia by rail for the final leg of the journey, for now). For grain transportation alone, Georgia receives only minimal transit revenue because of the relatively short transit distance involved. The greater concern is whether this trend could similarly expand to Armenia’s higher-value cargo — liquid gas, fertilisers, and petroleum products — using the same alternative route through Azerbaijan.

‘The Georgian government appears to believe that the proposed TRIPP corridor and the Middle Corridor will complement one another. I am not convinced that will be the case’, transport corridor analyst Paata Tsagareishvili told OC Media. ‘As soon as the corridor becomes operational, Azerbaijan is likely to act very aggressively, while Armenia remains less prepared. In such a scenario, Georgia could lose up to 2 million tonnes of cargo annually — roughly 15–17% of total transit volumes.’

Tsagareishvili implied that Azerbaijan would effectively control the ‘tap’ of regional cargo flows, and could direct freight traffic toward whichever route best served its own strategic interests — either through TRIPP or Georgia.

The figures are significant, though far from catastrophic. In the first quarter of 2026, Georgia’s rail network transported 3 million tonnes of cargo. More than half of this was transit shipments, with petroleum products the single largest freight category.

As Tsagareishvili has emphasised, while there was a clear growth in transit post-2023 — in large part due to Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine — this war-driven surge could not be sustained.

The data reflects both Georgia’s continued importance and its underlying vulnerability. Much of the country’s transit economy remains concentrated in a narrow set of cargo flows that could gradually diversify toward competing routes if regional connectivity improves.

Armenia’s ambitions collide with infrastructure reality

For years, Armenia has tried to position itself within emerging Eurasian transport networks, including the North–South Transport Corridor and the Trans-Caspian International Transport Route. Recent disruptions through Iran have sharpened those discussions — and exposed the gap between aspiration and reality.

Before the escalation of the Middle East crisis, a substantial portion of Chinese cargo entered Armenia through Iran, arriving in the port of Bandar Abbas on the Persian Gulf before heading north to the Meghri–Nordooz crossing. Those flows have now largely rerouted through Georgian ports. In April, Georgia responded to the increased traffic by launching a new Poti–Tbilisi Dry Port logistics route, allowing Armenian freight forwarders to collect containers in Tbilisi rather than travelling to Poti directly.

The episode illustrates both the opportunity Armenia senses and the constraints it faces. For one, the country’s railway network — operated under concession by Russian Railways since 2008 — remains slow.

‘In practice, no real unblocking of transport communications has occurred so far’, Laura Sarkisyan, a journalist and founder of the Telegram channel Armenian Crossroads tells OC Media. ‘Yerevan has the desire and intention’, she says, ‘but the ball is now in Baku and Ankara’s court. Without their political will, no unblocking will happen no matter how hard Yerevan tries.’

At the centre of the dispute is a proposed railway route through southern Armenia along the Iranian border. The line largely follows Soviet-era infrastructure along the River Araks through mountainous terrain where alternative alignments are technically difficult and prohibitively expensive. Much of the existing infrastructure — bridges, tunnels, utilities — no longer meets modern standards and would require extensive reconstruction before international freight could use it.

Timing is also critical. Turkey is already building the Nakhchivan–Kars railway segment on its side of the border. If Ankara completes its section before Armenia modernises its own, Armenia risks becoming a marginal transit link rather than a central one — with transit revenues potentially falling five-fold and only a fraction of its territory actively integrated into the route.

The geopolitical stakes extend well beyond logistics. A fully operational corridor linking Central Asia, the South Caucasus, and Turkey would reduce dependence on both Russian and Iranian transit while deepening east–west connectivity.

‘Armenia’s population has not yet recovered from the war and the forced exodus from Artsakh [Nagorno-Karabakh]’, Sarkisyan said, her perspective underscoring the widely held understanding that, in the wake of the conflict, Armenia can no longer depend on Russia for either security guarantees or economic stability.

‘We are still living with a post-war syndrome, even if it may not always be visible on the surface’, she added.

A new Gyumri Dry Port project near the Turkish border — now involving Hamburg Port management — could become a significant logistics hub linking Armenia, Turkey, and Azerbaijan if the Armenia–Turkey border reopens. That would strengthen Armenia’s position in regional trade, but it would also draw cargo away from Georgian road corridors. More competition, less complementary — unless the two countries choose a different approach.

Competition vs collaboration

Regional analysts increasingly argue that treating transit as zero-sum is strategically self-defeating. The South Caucasus as a whole competes against larger, better-funded corridors elsewhere in Eurasia. Internal fragmentation — overlapping projects, political rivalry, and inconsistent regulation — could weaken every country’s position, not just the losers of any given bilateral dispute.

‘The Trans-Caspian Middle Corridor should not be understood as an infrastructure project confined to a single country, but as a complex, interconnected chain spanning Central Asia, the Caspian Sea, the South Caucasus, and onward to Europe’, Lekso Aleksishvili, the CEO of the Policy and Management Consulting Group (PMCG), tells OC Media. ‘Without strong integration among participating countries — on customs, logistics, digitalisation, and regulatory frameworks — bottlenecks emerge at every border, undermining both efficiency and competitiveness’, he says.

That logic applies directly to Georgia and Armenia. Georgian Prime Minister Irakli Kobakhidze has pushed back against narratives that frame Armenia as a rival corridor to Georgia, arguing that outside forces are deliberately trying to drive a wedge between Yerevan and Tbilisi. Despite this, however, the risk of rivalry is real regardless of who is promoting it.

Georgia may need more than inertia: infrastructure investment, stronger logistics policy, deeper EU integration, and active economic diplomacy could all help the country remain competitive. For Armenia, hurdles remain surrounding control of its rail network, a need for major tunnel projects, and a politically fraught normalisation process — hurdles it must overcome all while managing an uncertain relationship with both Baku and Tehran.

As former central banker and economist Roman Gotsiridze puts it, Armenia needs road and railway modernisation and Georgia needs the Anaklia port project — in other words, ‘we need to rely on ourselves’.

Speaking to Imedi on 24 May, Georgian Economy Minister Mariam Kvrivishvili insisted that the Anaklia Port remained on track, adding that 2029 would remain the target for completion — a claim disputed by many local experts and opposition figures.

‘First they said 2028, then 2029, even 2032, which was later retracted’, Gotsiridze notes. ‘Highly unlikely, as the land infrastructure projects are not even underway.’

For many observers, however, neither Armenia nor Georgia can succeed by treating the other as an obstacle.

Aleksishvili says that Georgia did not truly build its role as a transit hub, it just happened.

‘These two neighbours [Armenia and Azerbaijan] were at war — what should we do now, tell them why are you at peace?’, he says.

Now, the peace process (which Tbilisi publicly supports) is slowly removing the conditions that made its transit advantage possible. But can Georgia stay competitive on its own merits, rather than relying on regional instability?

Most experts give a straight forward answer: Georgia needs to step up. It needs to complete major projects like Anaklia, push faster toward EU integration, and treat proximity to Europe as a practical tool rather than an abstract goal.

And as Georgia’s advantage from regional conflicts fades, what may matter more now is no longer what its neighbours fail to do, but what Georgia itself manages to build.

Armenia Upcoming Parliamentary Elections: Candidates and Risk Scenarios

All operations on Armenia: Russia’s influence machine targets the vote

Joseph Bodnar and Simona N.

Russia announced that it would stop supplying cheap oil and gas to Armenia if the country continues its efforts to join the European Union. This warning came just before the June 7 election, where Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan’s Civil Contract party leads in the polls. Maria Zakharova from the Russian Foreign Ministry stated that a letter had been sent officially warning of the suspension of agreements on the supply of natural gas, petroleum, and diamonds if Armenia proceeds with EU membership.

Armenia, a landlocked nation of about 3 million people, has historically been close to Russia, relying heavily on it for energy—importing 2.7 billion cubic meters of gas last year, with 82% from Russia. However, relations have weakened as Armenia has sought closer ties with the West. Recently, U. S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio visited Yerevan and signed a strategic partnership agreement, alongside Armenia’s law to begin the EU accession process.

With information from Reuters