Vardanyan-linked party announces cooperation agreement with Karapetyan’s Stron

The Country to Live party, linked to former Nagorno-Karabakh State Minister and businessperson Ruben Vardanyan, has announced a memorandum of cooperation with the Strong Armenia Alliance of Parties, founded by Russian–Armenian billionaire Samvel Karapetyan, ahead of Armenia’s 2026 parliamentary elections.

Vardanyan is currently serving a 20-year sentence in Azerbaijan on charges of crimes against peace and humanity, war crimes, and terrorism — allegations he rejects.

According to the memorandum signed on Tuesday, Karapetyan’s alliance and the Country to Live ‘are uniting their political, organisational, and human resources’ to participate in the 7 June parliamentary elections.

The party said the agreement envisages ‘forming a unified political agenda and ensuring the active involvement of the regional teams’ of Country to Live within the alliance.

Strong Armenia’s electoral list, published again on Tuesday, does not include the Country to Live party’s founders, Mesrop Arakelyan and Mane Tandilyan, though no detailed explanation was provided. Other members of the party were included.

The party said the decision to cooperate was made amid ‘serious security, political, and value-based challenges’ in Armenia, which ‘require nationwide consolidation, responsibility, and clear political will’.

The statement also stressed that cooperation was based, among other issues, on the ‘inarguable priority of returning Armenian prisoners as a key prerequisite for restoring national dignity and establishing a just and lasting peace’.

‘On 7 June, around 2.5 million people will have the opportunity to make a choice. Around 2.5 million, except for 19, who remain imprisoned in Baku solely for being Armenian’, Arakelyan said, expressing confidence that Karapetyan would ‘spare nothing’ to ensure their return.

Azerbaijan has officially acknowledged holding 19 Armenian detainees, including former political and military leaders of Nagorno-Karabakh, who are serving sentences on various charges.

Arakelyan further noted that the parliamentary elections would be ‘a choice between surrender and resistance’ and ‘a choice to have a state where the return of Armenian detainees becomes an unquestionable priority’.

The statement was made while Strong Armenia convened a congress to approve the first 30 candidates on the alliance’s electoral list to be submitted to the Central Election Commission.

On the same day, the alliance also announced it would be formally named the Strong Armenia Alliance of Parties, after dropping Karapetyan’s name in line with recent amendments to Armenia’s electoral code banning personal names in alliance titles.

Alongside Karapetyan’s party, the coalition includes two smaller, less prominent parties — New Era and United Armenians. Earlier talks saw the group considering the inclusion of more established parties, such as the Armenian National Congress under Armenia’s first president, Levon Ter-Petrosyan, but negotiations failed to produce an agreement.

Public opinion surveys have indicated that Karapetyan’s alliance is poised to be Pashinyan’s Civil Contract’s primary opponent in the June elections.

In the meantime, Karapetyan remains under house arrest, which was extended by three months in mid-April, on charges of calling for a coup, money laundering, and others.

He is also not included in the alliance’s electoral list despite being named its prime ministerial candidate. This move sparked controversy due to legal requirements that stipulate that candidates for the position should hold only Armenian citizenship and have resided in the country for the past four years.

Karapetyan announced in April that he had initiated the process of renouncing his Russian and Cypriot citizenship ahead of the elections.