On 7 June Armenia will hold one of its most pivotal elections since regaining independence in 1991. The vote arrives as the country is poised between a painful redefinition of its identity and a still uncertain horizon of opportunity.  

In 2023 Armenia definitively lost the territory of Mountainous Karabakh to Azerbaijan. The struggle to control the region was a driving force of Armenia’s 1990s national independence movement, and its loss deprived Armenian nationalism of a key foundation. Yet the loss of Karabakh has also loosened Russian control over Armenian foreign policy, demonstrating Moscow’s declining power in the South Caucasus and the limits of its patronage.  

Under the banner of a ‘Real Armenia’ – rather than one with ambitions for wider borders – incumbent Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan and his Civil Contract party are campaigning for a final peace accord with Azerbaijan. They hope to end four decades of conflict with a final renunciation of territorial claims and Armenia’s integration into regional connectivity. Pashinyan has also recalibrated Armenia’s foreign policy with a widely discussed ‘pivot’ to the West – a move which has led to warnings of a ‘Ukraine scenario’ from Russian President Vladimir Putin.

The opposition to Pashinyan includes blocs seeking to rehabilitate ties with Russia, and smaller parties with little chance of passing the threshold to enter parliament. Polls put Civil Contract ahead of its nearest rival, the ‘Strong Armenia’ bloc led by Russian-Armenian billionaire Samvel Karapetyan, with a plurality of voters onside.

Many voters remain undecided. But in a mid-May poll, 45 per cent of these said they believed Armenia is moving in the right direction. Despite well-founded fears over information manipulation from abroad, Pashinyan’s progress is unlikely to be halted.

A public endorsement of peace

At a White House summit in August 2025 the Armenian and Azerbaijani foreign ministers initialled – but did not sign – a peace agreement in the presence of President Donald Trump. There have been no military fatalities since February 2024, and Azerbaijan and Turkey have both taken steps towards dismantling their long-standing blockade of Armenia.

This unprecedented progress remains provisional. Signing the agreement depends on Armenia’s adoption – at Azerbaijan’s insistence – of a new constitution with all references to Mountainous Karabakh removed. Adopting a new constitution will require a separate referendum after the election.

That makes this election effectively a preliminary referendum on the terms Pashinyan has negotiated and the trajectory he plans for Armenia.

Armenians certainly sense the improvement in security after a decade of near-continuous frontline violence, including defeat to Azerbaijan in 2020’s war, an Azerbaijani offensive on Armenia’s territory in September 2022, and Baku’s military incorporation of Karabakh in September 2023. The need to come to lasting terms with Baku is widely recognized. But the loss of Karabakh has left severe fractures in Armenia’s body politic.

These have surfaced during the campaign in unfortunate and ominous ways. Pashinyan has had a series of vitriolic encounters on the campaign trail with citizens challenging his peace narrative. And a video of masked men threatening violence against him has circulated online. Such threats are not taken lightly in a country that has witnessed repeated political violence, including the assassination of an entire tier of leadership in 1999’s parliament shooting.

Meanwhile, many in civil society are uncomfortable with what they see as an attempt by the government to enforce amnesia about the loss of Mountainous Karabakh and the mass displacement of its population. Indeed, some claim that government rhetoric spills into hate speech towards former Karabakh Armenians. Pashinyan and his supporters, however, see such claims as masking resistance to the terms of the peace with Azerbaijan.

This febrile atmosphere adds to accumulating worries over Armenia’s democratic trajectory, as polarization shapes an ‘all or nothing’ attitude to political allegiance. The tone of exchanges between the prime minister and a growing number of constituencies – parts of the opposition, the Armenian Apostolic Church and Karabakh Armenians – is fuelling concerns about the direction of Armenia’s political culture.

For example, in a heated exchange on the campaign trail, Pashinyan asked a Karabakh Armenian refugee why he was still alive, implying he should have stayed and died in Karabakh. The man was later arrested on a charge of hooliganism. Such demarches do not bode well for the stability of any future agreement.  

Even if ‘Real Armenia’ is accepted as a geopolitical reality, how it is going to deal with displaced Armenians and the legacy of Karabakh remains an open question – one that must ultimately be decided by Armenians themselves.  

A ‘pivot to the West’, or to the world?

Armenia’s geopolitics unfortunately work against a measured discussion of its democracy.

The 2018 ‘Velvet Revolution’ that swept Pashinyan to power consciously defined itself as a purely domestic affair, leaving Armenia’s alliance with Russia intact. But the final loss of Karabakh in 2023 released Pashinyan from the need to uphold this alignment. At the same time, it solidified the opposition’s belief that rapprochement with Moscow is the only way to prevent further calamity.

Much has been made of Armenia’s ‘pivot’ to the West. Indeed, many recent outcomes would have been unimaginable a few years ago, when the country was often perceived as a submissive Russian client.

Notably, the US has become a key peace broker, through the Trump Route for International Peace and Prosperity (TRIPP) – a planned trade, communications and energy transit route running across southern Armenia between Azerbaijan and its exclave Nakhchivan. Yerevan also hosted a European Political Community summit, alongside the first ever EU-Armenia summit, a few days before the election campaign began. Warm rhetoric of Armenia’s ‘European choice’ dominated the airwaves.  

Yet ‘pivots to the West’ also carry risks for Armenia’s democracy. The more that Russia perceives Armenia as a liability in a poaching game with the EU, the more it will commit to the rules of that game. That is risky for Armenia, given its significant dependencies on Russia for energy and food supply, and still substantial remittances from Armenian migrant workers in Russia.

Conversely, the more that Europe sees Armenia as vulnerable to Russian pressure, the easier it will be to overlook shortcomings in Pashinyan’s democratic record in hopes of upholding the ‘Western candidate.’

A choice between Russia and the West is also a reductive way of viewing of Armenia’s foreign policy options. Multipolarity is inherent to the South Caucasus, and increasingly evident in the foreign policies of its states. All three of the South Caucasus countries are converging on omni-alignment, seeking to become nodes in wider Eurasian connectivity flows.

Armenia has been upgrading its relations in multiple directions, including with the Gulf states, South Asia and China. And important ties with Russia remain: Yerevan’s membership of the Russian-led Collective Security Treaty Organization (CSTO) is a dead letter and unlikely to be revived. But its membership of the Eurasian Economic Union (EAEU) still affords real benefits. And Russia remains Armenia’s single largest export market.

Polls show a majority of citizens in favour of Armenian EU membership. But that goal remains distant: Armenia’s membership of the EAEU, Georgia’s stalled EU candidacy, and the EU’s own preoccupation with the candidacies of Ukraine and Moldova are crucial structural constraints that should be remembered when talking about the current scope of any ‘pivot’ West.

With enlargement not on the table for now, Europe can help Armenia with quiet, consistent support, strengthening its institutions and the understanding that binary choices reduce Yerevan’s leeway.

Pashinyan’s ‘Real Armenia’ campaign implies an inevitable reckoning with the country’s geopolitics and capacities. An antagonistic political culture and a reductive approach to the country’s foreign policy choices could still undermine this painful yet necessary agenda.