Europe’s Intensifying Interest in Armenia Signals Shifting Regional Dynamics

On May 4 and 5, European leaders gathered in Yerevan for two landmark meetings: the European Political Community summit — which included Canadian representation, signaling Canada’s imperative to increase influence in the EU — and the first-ever EU-Armenia summit. Armenia’s geographical position as an alternative corridor to Central Asia, allowing EU countries to bypass Russia, along with its ability to serve as a buffer to neighboring Iran, and its willingness to deepen institutional relations with democratic countries, represent an opportunity for the EU. At the same time, Armenia is set to hold a critical parliamentary election on June 7 amid record levels of Russian hybrid activity across Europe. Like many recent elections across Russia’s former sphere of influence, the vote will serve as a major test of the country’s political trajectory: whether Armenia can withstand Moscow’s pressure to return to its orbit, or whether it will continue deepening its alignment with Europe and the West.

Armenian-Russian relations first became strained when Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan, leader of the Civil Contract Party, came to power in 2018 following the Velvet Revolution — a mass anti-corruption and democratic reform protest movement that ended nearly two decades of dominance by the Republican Party of Armenia. However, relations sharply deteriorated in 2023, when Azerbaijan took full control of the long-contested territory, Nagorno-Karabakh, despite the presence of Russian peacekeepers. At the time, Armenia was still a member of the Russian-led Collective Security Treaty Organization (CSTO), a post-Soviet security alliance that is believed to have been created as a counterweight to the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO). After the takeover of Nagorno-Karabakh, Pashinyan and his party felt that Russia (and the CSTO) had failed to uphold its security commitments to Armenia and froze its participation in February 2024.

Throughout Yerevan’s fraying relations with Moscow, Pashinyan tilted closer to Europe and the EU. In 2024, the EU officially launched a visa liberalization process with the country. In 2025, the ruling Civil Contract party signed the EU integration Act into law, mandating the government to pursue EU integration even though it is still in the Comprehensive and Enhanced Partnership Agreement (CEPA) phase, meaning it must still work to implement democratic and anti-corruption reform before it can become an official EU candidate.

Yet the upcoming parliamentary election could jeopardize this deepening relationship — one that matters not only to Yerevan, but increasingly to Brussels. As the EU’s other partnerships in the South Caucasus grow more complicated, with Azerbaijan continuing along an authoritarian path, and Georgia undergoing renewed democratic backsliding, Armenia has emerged as an increasingly important strategic partner for Europe in a region that serves as a critical energy corridor, especially as one of the few viable routes for trade, energy, and connectivity that can bypass Russian and Iranian controlled or influenced routes. Loss of access to the South Caucasus would narrow Europe’s options for reaching the Caspian and Central Asia, weaken efforts to diversify energy and supply chains away from Russia, while also leaving greater space for Moscow, Tehran, Ankara, and Beijing, all of which have historic ties and influence in the region, to shape its political and economic future. At a time when the EU is seeking to define its role in great-power competition amid strained relations with the United States, this dynamic is incredibly important.

Armenia’s moves toward normalization with Türkiye and Azerbaijan have also intensified European attention. If implemented, normalization — along with the prospect of the U.S.-facilitated Trump Route for International Peace and Prosperity (TRIPP) — could reopen routes that have been closed for decades and reshape regional connectivity across the South Caucasus. For years, peace between Armenia and Azerbaijan was Brussels’ primary concern regarding Yerevan, often overshadowing deeper EU interest in Armenian domestic politics, especially compared with Georgia and Azerbaijan. But as Georgia and Azerbaijan become less viable partners for Europe, the EU has thrown its support behind Pashinyan and the Civil Contract Party ahead of the upcoming elections, echoing the backing it showed Moldova’s pro-European forces during elections that were also heavily targeted by Russian interference.

That support comes as recent reporting has highlighted the scale of interference in Armenia’s upcoming election. Research from the Yerevan-based Regional Center for Democracy and Security (RCDS) has found that Moscow is deploying many of the same tools it used during Moldova’s 2024 presidential and 2025 parliamentary elections, such as disinformation campaigns, political influence operations, and efforts to exploit social divisions. Leaked Russian documents show that these tactics include the creation of misleading or fake institutional and media websites — part of the broader “Doppelganger” tactic observed across multiple countries — fake stories targeting pro-European leaders, Diaspora-influence operations, and the mobilization and payment of influencers, all tactics that have also been observed in Moldova, and are discussed at length in The Soufan Center’s latest report.

However, the RCDS researchers found that Armenia presents a distinct and potentially more vulnerable environment. Unlike Moldova, which has spent years building institutional, legal, civil-society, and media responses to Russian information manipulation, Armenia’s experience with Russian disinformation campaigns is more recent, only intensifying after Pashinyan’s transition into power, and accelerating in 2023. The Armenian public is therefore less inoculated than the Moldovan public against Russian information operations, and its institutions are less experienced and developed in countering such tactics. Armenia’s economic reliance on Russia is also still more entrenched than Moldova’s in recent years, as it is still a member of the Russian-led Eurasian Economic Union. Armenia’s security anxieties are also sharper after years of conflict with Azerbaijan. Its inclination towards the EU is driven more by these anxieties rather than a focused goal of complete EU integration like that in Moldova. This more complex security environment also results in a more opaque influence environment, where Azerbaijani and Turkish narratives may intersect or compete with Russian ones.

Nevertheless, Pashinyan is still a front-runner in the upcoming elections even though his party is not expected to win the two-thirds majority needed to pass constitutional reform required to officially normalize relations with Azerbaijan. Public opinion in Armenia also reflects the complicated political and economic considerations at play in this election. A poll by the International Republican Institute (IRI) found that 72 percent of Armenians either strongly or somewhat support “possible accession to the European Union.” Only 24 percent of Armenians somewhat or strongly oppose accession. However, this does not seemingly translate into a desire for a clean break with Russia. 43 percent of Armenians view Russia as their country’s most important political partner. 42 percent named the U.S., while only 29 percent named the European Union. In other words, while many Armenians are increasingly favorable toward Europe, they remain aware of the country’s economic dependence on Russia. As a result, much of the public appears to favor a careful balancing strategy: deepening ties with the EU without provoking a rupture with Moscow that could carry immediate costs for Armenia’s economy, energy security, or regional stability.

At the same time, Pashinyan remains a polarizing figure in Armenian politics. His normalization policy toward Azerbaijan and Türkiye has drawn sharp criticism from opponents who argue that he has conceded too much in the name of peace, particularly after the influx of Armenian refugees from Nagorno-Karabakh who were ethnically cleansed from the territory in 2023 after Azerbaijan’s takeover. Some Armenians also believe his government mishandled the political and humanitarian aftermath, including the resettlement and integration of displaced Nagorno-Karabakh Armenians. Videos of tense exchanges with citizens, including displaced Armenians, have gone viral on social media. Indeed, the country remains split on the implementation of normalization policies, such as the TRIPP. 44 percent of respondents to the IRI poll support the implementation of the corridor, while 47 percent oppose it.

While Pashinyan was thrust into power in 2018 on a popular anti-corruption wave, his reform record has since come under scrutiny. Freedom House has noted slow progress on anti-corruption and judicial reform. It noted that successful corruption prosecutions were rare and that the resignation of six senior judicial officials at the Prime Minister’s request raised “concerns about judicial independence.” At the same time, an OCCRP/CivilNet investigation raised questions about irregular donations to the Civil Contract party, including cases where listed donors denied making contributions, and donations appeared to exceed legal limits. Among the prominent politicians listed as running in the parliamentary elections, Pashinyan was the most trusted at about 20 percent. However, 48 percent of Armenians said they did not trust any politician.

As analyst Thomas de Waal has noted, the EU must therefore tread carefully in its support for Pashinyan and his party. While our research at The Soufan Center has highlighted the importance of Western backing in countering Russian hybrid tactics and election interference across Moscow’s traditional sphere of influence, it has also underscored the need to help foster strong institutions — not only at the national level, but locally as well. Many experts argue that one of the shortcomings of U.S. and European support for Georgia was an overreliance on pro-Western political leadership without sufficient investment in durable democratic institutions, a vulnerability that has contributed to the country’s current democratic backsliding.