US Secretary of State Marco Rubio’s official visit to Yerevan scheduled for tomorrow is outside the scope of the usual diplomatic protocol and has a pronounced domestic political tone.

On the eve of the decisive parliamentary elections to be held in Armenia on June 7, the appearance of a high-ranking Washington official in the Armenian capital is a direct signal that the United States is trying to influence internal political processes with its political weight and, based on its own interests, to keep the power in Armenia under control. Although the main agenda will probably revolve around the TRIPP project. Visits of this level during the hot pre-election campaign document the desire of foreign forces to guide Armenia’s sovereign election, which Washington uses to make Yerevan’s geopolitical orbit irreversible.

This is not new, but a continuation of the consistent strategy implemented by the American side. back in February of the current year, the visit of the US Vice President JD Vance to Yerevan laid the foundations for this trend. At that time, Vance, speaking about regional projects and the June 7 elections, made an unprecedentedly direct and directional statement for Western diplomacy, stating:

“The question is how to make the peace deal successfully move to the next stage, how to make the prime minister be able to focus on the future.

I know the election is coming up, I don’t want to talk about it, but if my support means anything, he certainly has it. He is a person who can build a long-term partnership to make such projects come to fruition.”

Such a position of the American side clearly shows that the White House considers Pashinyan’s re-election not a free expression of the will of the Armenian people, but a necessary prerequisite for the success of its own strategic and transit programs in the region.

In addition to the American vector, in the past weeks, Yerevan has also turned into a center of European diplomatic activity, which also confirms the foreign bet placed on the current government. With the 8th European Political Community (EPC) summit held in Armenia at the beginning of May and the inaugural RA-EU bilateral summit with the participation of European Council President Antonio Costa and European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen, Brussels tried to strengthen Pashinyan’s position in the domestic political and electoral processes. These measures served as political support for the current administration during the pre-election period, where Europe’s promises of economic and energy “aid” are actually intended to accelerate Armenia’s disengagement from Russia, without considering its dire economic consequences.

Along with such active participation of the West, extremely worrying and unprecedented degradation trends are being recorded in Armenian-Russian relations. Moscow no longer hides its strong opposition to Yerevan’s foreign policy turn and Western orientation, which is manifested in tough rhetoric at the highest level. The last statement of the Deputy Chairman of the Security Council of the Russian Federation Dmitry Medvedev, where he calls Pashinyan a “scoundrel”, condenses the Kremlin’s response to the developments. Medvedev noted that “as a result of Pashinyan’s dangerous path, the people of Armenia will lose the Russian market and the entire Eurasian Economic Union.”

“It seems that he considers us fools. At the same time, he made a big mistake in his calculations and is pursuing a path that is extremely dangerous for his country,” Medvedev said.

This wording shows that Russia views official Yerevan’s steps as a treacherous turn and is ready to use its own countermeasures to abort Western projects. The current Armenian pre-election campaign has turned into a process accompanied by active, undisguised interference and geopolitical influence. Armenia has appeared in the center of a classic “proxy-political” struggle, where internal elections lose their sovereign content and serve as a platform for global conflicts between the West and Russia. On the one hand, the USA and the EU, through high-ranking visits and political pressure, are trying to support the re-election of Pashinyan’s regime at all costs, on the other hand, Russia, with tough rhetoric and the use of economic and political leverage, shows that it will not allow the country’s final transition to the opposite camp.

In the light of all this, it can be expected that by June 7, the attempts of external influence will reach their peak, where the voter is offered the dilemma “West or Russia”, undermining internal stability, while the Armenian voter must choose a political force, taking into account many other realities.

The June 7 elections for Armenia cease to be a mere internal political event, turning into a decisive conflict of global forces over the country’s geopolitical vector. While the West is trying to strengthen the positions of the current administration with high-level visits and economic promises, and Russia is trying to prevent the loss of influence with harsh warnings and leveraging, the only guarantee of future stability is to make choices based on one’s own sovereign interests and free from external coercion.

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