Narek Karapetyan searches for his name on the voter lists before entering the polling station. Tashir, June 7, 2026. Marut Vanyan/ The Armenian Mirror-Spectator
After a tense election season, the Central Election Commission (CEC) has released initial results for the number of seats in parliament:
Civil Contract (Nikol Pashinyan) 64 seats
Strong Armenia (Samvel Karapetyan) 29 seats
Armenia Alliance (Robert Kocharyan) 12 seats
Although the election results have already been announced, the tension continues to simmer in and around Armenia. “If Pashinyan doesn’t leave, it will be bad, very bad,” said former President Rober Kocharyan. In turn, Pashinyan has threatened Kocharyan, as well as opposition candidates and oligarchs Samvel Karapetyan, and Gagik Tsarukyan with decades in prison.
At the same time, “warnings” are being sounded from Moscow that Armenia cannot sit in two chairs simultaneously, directly saying that it must choose the West or Russia. While Russia is blocking Armenian goods from its market, Armenia exported its first shipment of flowers to Latvia and Ukraine. The villagers are now worried about their apricot crop, which might rot without a Russian market.
A woman takes out her shop’s merchandise in the morning, hoping to sell something. Tashir, June 7, 2026 (photo Marut Vanyan/The Armenian Mirror-Spectator)
On June 7, I visited Armenia’s Tashir with a Swedish colleague to watch the voting process there. There are posters of Samvel Karapetyan everywhere. Everyone speaks of him with admiration. Next to the half-ruined buildings and factories left over from the Soviet era are shining business centers. “Everything you see here was built with Samvel Karapetyan’s funds,” said one resident, a grandmother named Haykanush, 87, who owns a little shop in from the church.
In the morning, Narek Karapetyan arrived at the polling station in Tashir, where everyone hugged and kissed him, and wished him success in the elections. “It will only take you 10 minutes, my fellow citizens, please all of you participate in the elections, and vote for whomever you want,” Karapetyan said to those gathered at the polling station.
Grandma Haykanush worked as a cook for forty years and has 36 grandchildren and great-grandchildren. She now keeps a little shop in front of the church in Tashir, June 7, 2026 (photo Marut Vanyan/ The Armenian Mirror-Spectator)
When we returned from Tashir to Vanadzor, posters for Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan were clearly visible on the walls of all the shops and city’s walls. It was unnecessary to ask the people sitting under those posters who they would vote for. It is clear that the answer is Pashinyan.
In this post-election period, the Armenian Mirror-Spectator has spoken to ordinary people from different regions of Armenia. Various polls have already stated that almost half of the Armenian population did not participate in the elections. Many hesitate to mention their names when they were asked for whom they voted.
One person from Yerevan replied, “I didn’t vote for anyone. I voted for my family. I will continue to water trees as I used to, nothing will change in my life.”
Another person, a Hrazdan resident, echoed the fatalistic sentiment.
Armenia between Russia and Europe
“I didn’t vote for anyone, I don’t need to. I don’t want to talk about it at all,” he said.
Stand up for peace,” is the slogan of the Pashinyan’s Civil Contract party. Gyularagark, June 7, 2026 (photo Marut Vanyan/ The Armenian Mirror-Spectator)
A nurse from Yerevan expressed her fear that “war is about to escalate in Armenia. I have voted, I went to the polling station at 7:30 in the morning so that I could vote first. I wouldn’t like to mention whom for I voted for, but I feel that there will be a war here and my heart aches for it.”
A man from Hrazdan, whose wife is from Artsakh and does not have the right to vote, said that he did not vote either. “It doesn’t interest me at all, and I just get nervous when they talk about elections,” he said.
Two others, one from Georgia and another from Aleppo, Syria, expressed the same sense of futility when it came to voting, noting that their lives would not change as a result of voting.
Finally, a paramedic from Abovyan, when asked who he voted for, replied, “Of course for Pashinyan! Why should I vote for Tsarukyan?”
These elections raise more questions both in Armenia’s domestic political life and in the geopolitical processes surrounding it. Will TRIPP construction work finally begin on the ground? Will Armenia be able to keep its economy stable by selling flowers on the European market? How will Moscow react to being hit by 200 drones by Ukraine tonight, and what will the Armenian-Azerbaijani peace process ultimately look like? Political forces in Armenia are still arguing about who stole votes from whom.
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