Category: News

Public TV aired an upbeat 2024 concert by the pop singer Tata Simonyan on Sunday, the sixth anniversary of the start of the Second Karabakh War, sparking outrage. On Monday, the broadcaster shared an apology, describing the choice as a ‘mistake’.

This is not the first time that Public TV has been at the centre of controversy concerning its coverage of Nagorno-Karabakh. Earlier in September, Public TV did not acknowledge the third anniversary of the 2023 exodus of Armenians from Nagorno-Karabakh.

Addressing outrage at the concert’s festive tone on social media, Public TV shared an apology on Monday. They said that they are reviewing relevant procedures to prevent such cases from happening again.

‘Dear viewers, the entertainment concert broadcast on the Public Television Company’s air on 27 September was a mistake, and we fully accept responsibility for it. We will not try to justify what happened by citing programming, technical, or operational circumstances. We apologise for what happened’, the statement read.

The statement followed an earlier reaction from the artist whose concert was aired on Sunday, Tata Simonyan, who condemned the broadcast and said the concert was aired without his consent.

‘I apologise for what happened, but I consider it important to note that the concert is the property of the Public Television Company. The material was used without my consent. I consider the Public Television Company’s broadcast of my concert on this day to be a gross error with no justification’, he wrote.

The concert was organised as part of the Festivar series of state-funded cultural events following a pattern of similar initiatives launched by Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan since he came to power in 2018. Critics argue that the concerts allow Pashinyan to shift focus from pressing security concerns. In the past, some have also raised questions about the transparency of the selection process for those contracted to organise the events.

This is not the first time that Public TV has been at the centre of accusations that it is promoting the ruling party’s agenda.

Since the war and displacement of Nagorno-Karabakh Armenians, Pashinyan has repeatedly stated that the Nagorno-Karabakh issue was closed, claiming this is essential for the peace process. In step with Pashinyan’s approach, ruling party officials have avoided making public announcements to mark anniversaries and visiting the Yerablur Military Pantheon, where people usually pay their respects to those who died in the war.

The host of Public TV’s late-night political interview show, Petros Ghazaryan, has been often criticised for favouring guests from the ruling party. An analysis of 426 interviews by independent journalist Katya Mamyan found that more than half of Ghazaryan’s airtime was occupied by Civil Contract party members.

On 19 September, Public TV did not mention that it was the third anniversary of the displacement of Karabakh Armenians, when 120,000 Armenians were displaced following a large-scale assault by Azerbaijan. This assault came after a blockade of the region lasting almost 10 months. Public TV did not address the criticism it received for not acknowledging the war or its consequences.

Armenia has denied reports circulating on social media that they conceded five combat positions in the north to Azerbaijan during the border demarcation process.

OC Media was unable to find the original source for the reports that Yerevan was rebutting. A couple of social media posts spread the news on Facebook without giving a specific source.

Armenia’s Defence Ministry called claims that four or five Armenian positions near the village of Berdavan in the Tavush Province had come under Azerbaijani control ‘yet another fabrication’, with the local authorities in Noyemberyan also denying the claims.

The Office of Deputy Prime Minister Mher Grigoryan has also issued a statement denying that Armenia made the concessions and said the reports did not correspond to reality.

The border delimitation commissions of the two countries were created in 2022. Armenia’s commission is headed by Grigoryan, while Azerbaijan’s is headed by Deputy Prime Minister Shahin Mustafayev.

In 2024, Armenia’s agreement to delimit parts of its border with Azerbaijan, with a potential transfer of control over four disputed villages sparked protests in Tavush. The protests then escalated into a larger movement, Tavush for the Motherland, led by Archbishop Bagrat Galstanyan. Residents raised security concerns and accused the government of making unilateral concessions.

On 5 September 2025, the heads of the border delimitation commissions of the two countries made reciprocal visits across the Armenia–Azerbaijan border. This was the first confirmed instance of the two officials visiting each other’s territory.

Earlier this year, the Defence Ministry rejected another claim that positions near Jermuk had been handed to Azerbaijan.

In early September, controversy erupted in Armenia after a newspaper quoted a local official as saying that Azerbaijan had attempted to advance towards the Hakari Bridge, which connected Armenia to Nagorno-Karabakh.

Local officials have denied the reports.

The Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe (PACE) concluded Armenia’s parliamentary elections offered voters a genuine choice and were well run. However, PACE criticised the Central Election Commission (CEC) for annulling the results at three polling stations, claiming that the excluded results could have affected the election outcome. The report suggests amending the electoral law to address this issue in the future.

In the June parliamentary elections, Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan’s Civil Contract party won with 49.75% of the vote, winning 64 seats in parliament: a three-fifths majority.

Gagik Tsarukyan’s Prosperous Armenia party came close to entering parliament; Following a recount at several polling stations, the party secured 3.98% of the vote, falling just 0.02 percentage points short of the 4% threshold required.

The PACE report criticised the Commission’s choice to annul results in three polling stations. The CEC said they annulled the vote at these stations as, in two cases, members of the military were permitted to vote after the legal closing time. At the third station, ballots for one party were missing for most of the day.

According to calculations cited in PACE’s report, including the results from these stations could have put Prosperous Armenia over the threshold: which would have prevented Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan’s Civil Contract party from achieving a three-fifth majority in parliament.

Losing this majority would prevent Civil Contract from appointing Constitutional Court judges independently and amending certain aspects of national electoral legislation. Even without Prosperous Armenia in parliament, Pashinyan still lacks the constitutional majority required to hold a referendum to amend the constitution, which he has repeatedly stated he wants to do.

The CEC declined to order a revote at the time, explaining that the invalidation did not affect the overall result. The PACE delegation described this justification as ‘very insufficient’ given the stakes.

RFE/RL reports that the CEC had previously justified their decision to hold the vote again on the basis that voters would already be aware of the number of votes each party needed to win. While the report acknowledges that the CEC cited a Venice Commission opinion on the risk of tactical voting in repeat polls, it notes that the commission’s opinion does not rule out a vote if the outcome would fundamentally change the allocation of seats.

To avoid such situations, the delegation recommends amending the electoral code to explicitly require the election to be re-held when it could fundamentally change the results.

Neither the CEC nor the government had responded to the observations. Prosperous Armenia welcomed the recommendations.

‘Of course the parliament has been formed, but this parliament will go down in history as the parliament that deprived one parliamentary faction of the chance to enter it. The historical fact has now been recorded. It is on record that, thanks to the arbitrariness of this particular government, Prosperous Armenia has been deprived of the opportunity to appear in parliament’, the party’s spokesperson Iveta Tonoyan told RFE/RL.

In July, Armenian authorities arrested Tsarukyan for alleged money laundering. He denied the charges and called them ‘fabricated’.

Russian interference

The report states that the scale of Russian interference and foreign information operations was unprecedented for a Council of Europe member state. The report mentions several ways in which Russia tried to interfere, including restrictions on Armenian exports such as flowers, mineral water, and alcohol; threats to revise gas and oil supply terms; the demand from Eurasian Economic Union leaders that Armenia hold a referendum on choosing between the bloc and the EU; and Russian-linked information campaigns and threats against Armenian citizens and business owners. However, the delegation said allegations that tens of thousands of Russian-based Armenians would be brought in to vote remain unproven.

Observers also noted that Western leaders’ endorsement of the ruling party, including the US and French presidents, was perceived as interfering too, but the report describes these as far milder and non-coercive.

Abuse of administrative power

The PACE delegation noted significant ongoing gaps such as a lack of effective safeguards and proportionate sanctioning against administrative abuse. The delegation raised concerns about equal opportunities for political parties and stated that the campaign had become polarised. The delegation found that there were more than 200 investigations into suspected vote-buying, primarily targeting the opposition. This reinforced the perception of selective prosecution, and no convictions had been recorded by the time the report was written.

Employees in the public sector reported feeling pressured to attend rallies organised by the ruling party. Pre-election social measures, such as debt forgiveness and benefit increases, were seen as de facto campaign tools. While public television and key private broadcasters displayed a clear pro-government bias, other outlets were consistently critical of the government. The campaign also used AI-generated deepfakes.

Finally, the report noted an increase in voter turnout to 58.97%, up from 48.62% in 2018 and 49.40% in 2021. However, only 45% of polling stations were independently accessible to voters with disabilities. Observers recorded violations in around 44% of the observed precincts, primarily consisting of procedural errors, overcrowding, and breaches of secrecy.

Although the PACE 2021 report on the previous parliamentary elections did not have a single figure for violations, it stated that voting was rated positively in 98% of stations, with overcrowding in 14%, proxy or other interference in 6%,  and secrecy problems in 4%. The Prosecutor’s Office logged 319 election-day complaints.

On Sunday, the Civil Contract party was re-elected in two of the four Armenian communities where municipal elections were held, having run uncontested. The opposition, which had promised to field candidates in the regional elections, did not do so.

In two other communities, the results have yet to be announced.

This fall, 19 areas will hold municipal elections, but the opposition isn’t contesting them widely. Strong Armenia will run only in Stepanavan, while in Hrazdan, Tsakhadzor, Martuni, Araks and Artashat the opposition will be represented by candidates from the Armenia Alliance.

Civil Contract’s candidate for the town of Tumanyan in Armenia’s Lori province, Suren Tumanyan, has been re-elected with 95.1% of the vote. He ran uncontested. In 2021 Tumanyan ran in the local elections on the opposition Republican Party list and defeated Civil Contract. He left the opposition party and joined the ruling party in 2026. He confirmed the move to Factor.am, without explaining why he left the Republican Party.

The ruling Civil Contract party often recruits popular candidates from other parties. In Goris, for example, Mayor Arush Arushanyan, a former vocal critic of the government who accused Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan of losing Nagorno-Karabakh before, will ally with Civil Contract in the next elections.

Prior to the election, Pashinyan announced they would form an electoral alliance with Arushanyan’s Business Party. While Goris voters backed Civil Contract in the 2021 parliamentary election, they elected Arushanyan as mayor in the local vote that same year. Pashinyan said that the decision also reflects a wish to avoid renewed tensions in the community and added that similar ‘solidarity alliances’ could be formed in other communities.

Strong Armenia, the largest opposition force in parliament, won 26% in the Tumanyan community in June but fielded no candidate in its local election. The faction’s secretary, Tigran Abrahamyan, told Factor.am that the party will contest some local elections and skip others, focusing on communities where it sees a high chance of winning.

Tumanyan is the largest of the four communities holding elections, with a population of over 4,000. The council here is elected under the proportional system. Because Civil Contract was the only party standing, voters could only vote ‘for’ or ‘against,’ which meant the party needed more than half of the votes cast, with no minimum turnout thresholds. In Tumanyan, 2,390 of 2,520 participants voted for Civil Contract (95.1%), 123 voted against (4.9%), and seven ballots were invalid, according to Mkrtchyan.

On Sunday, Lermontovo in the Lori province, Ferik in Armavir, and Arzni in Kotayk also held local elections. In Lermontovo, Edik Chakhalyan, backed by Civil Contract, was re-elected community head with 96.6%, Governor Mkrtchyan announced.

In Ferik and Arzni, only the city council was elected. Ferik is a Yezidi-populated village where five people were nominated for five positions. At the time of writing, the Central Electoral Commission had not yet published the official results, but announced the voter turnout figures for Tumanyan (around 60%), Ferik (57%), Lermontovos (35%), and Arzni (45%).