Armenia’s East-West Choice and the Shadow of War

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.

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