June: 17, 2026
What the Central Electoral Commission did is simply mandate theft. About this 168 TVof Revue announced on the air of the program Elinar Vardanyan, the candidate of the National Assembly deputy on the pre-election list of the “Prosperous Armenia” party (PAP).commenting on the CEC’s decision to invalidate the results of the June 7 vote in three polling stations, due to which the PAP does not overcome the electoral threshold.
According to the member of the National Assembly, during the summarization of the preliminary results of the National Assembly election, fewer votes were counted in favor of the PAP than the party actually received as a result of the voters’ vote.
“If I say it in one word and try to express myself in an educated manner, it is simply absurd. What the Central Electoral Commission did is simply mandate theft. Look what happened. At the beginning, when the preliminary results were being summarized on the morning of June 8, it suddenly became clear that the “Prosperous Armenia” party did not cross the threshold of 4 percent. Then, when we investigated, we saw that even without recalculation, the numbers they entered did not match the extracts from the records we have. Of course, they say that it was a technical defect, but I have an inner belief that it was a deliberate step, so that they would not notice that four forces passed into the parliament at the stage of summarizing the preliminary results,” commented Elinar Vardanyan.
Elinar Vardanyan emphasizes that before the summary of the final results on June 14, the results of the recount were published, with which it was recorded that the PAP overcomes the electoral threshold of 4 percent, after which the voting results in three polling stations were declared invalid, which means that the invalidation of voting in those polling stations affects the results of the elections.
“When you put aside the votes of more than 2,000 citizens, those votes are the same for you – that’s one side of the issue, but on the other hand, it turns out that you are directly interfering with the results of the elections. We all saw that there were problems in those two polling stations, but what is the fault of the ordinary citizen who went to vote, that the CEC and electoral district commissions are not able to properly organize elections in their polling stations?
It turns out that the CEC decides whether my vote has value or not, and this is in the event that election violations occurred due to their fault, and here the requirement of the Election Code is definitely that a re-voting should be scheduled in case of invalid results in some polling stations. This is an imperative requirement. There can be no dilemma here,” emphasizes the deputy.
Elinar Vardanyan adds that according to the Electoral Code, if the above is not possible, then the entire election is declared invalid.
“And what did they do now – riot?” You can’t describe it any other way. You know, for these people, the constitution and laws have no meaning. These people simply don’t care about the constitution and laws,” the interlocutor adds.
Elinar Vardanyan also spoke about the fact that PAP, “Strong Armenia”, “Armenia” blocs, “Unity Wings” party intend to apply to the Constitutional Court with the demand to declare the election results invalid. According to Vardanyan, at the moment the PAP and other forces are preparing their applications to submit to the Constitutional Court.
Elinar Vardanyan does not have any expectations from the CC, but he believes that it is definitely necessary to apply to the CC in order to fix all the election violations that occurred during the entire election process with those applications.
“It should be emphasized that the election was not only the June 7 vote and it was not the counting of the voting results. The election is the whole process, and such a shameful election has never happened in the history of newly independent Armenia. These elections were organized exclusively within the framework of terror. First of all, in the pre-election phase, unequal conditions were created for the government and other political forces. What was allowed to the government, was not allowed to the opposition.
For what the opposition was subjected to criminal prosecution, in the same case, no proceedings were carried out against the ruling power. Threats, hate speech, criminal prosecutions, the use of administrative resources, along with scaring people – all this cannot have an impact on the entire electoral process,” Elinar Vardanyan adds.
Let’s remind that the Central Electoral Commission recognized the results of the June 7 vote as invalid in election precincts No. 12/13, 10/51, 36/65. As a result, PAP’s votes decreased, and the party did not overcome the electoral threshold of 4 percent. According to the final results summarized by the CEC, the PAP received 58,287 votes or 3.98 percent of the votes.
Full interview in the video.
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168: I announce the consolidation of opposition forces. Samvel Karapetyan
June: 17, 2026
Samvel Karapetyan, the leader of the “Strong Armenia” bloc, announces the process of consolidation of the opposition forces. He said that in an interview with a number of mass media editors, which will be published tomorrow, June 18.
“We made that mistake before the elections, many opposition forces, who maybe fought honestly, but overestimated their strength, we could not come to an agreement with many opposition forces, that’s why this consolidation is very important for our country and people,” Karapetyan said.
He believes that the opposition forces, for whom the country is dear, will respond to the offer and it will be possible to create a coalition of opposition forces at this post-election stage.
Samvel Karapetyan suggests forming a coordinating council, addressing the people in a live broadcast format, presenting the problems, assessing the situation, discussing possible steps and going in that direction.
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RFE/RL – Armenia Hosts Joint Drills With U.S, French, Greek Troops
French and Greek soldiers joined an annual U.S.-Armenian military exercise that began in Armenia on Wednesday amid the South Caucasus country’s heightened tensions with Russia.
According to the Armenian Defense Ministry, the weeklong exercise codenamed Eagle Partner 2026 involves 250 Armenian soldiers, 58 U.S. military personnel as well as 24 French and 11 Greek service members. They will practice joint peacekeeping operations at a training ground just north of Yerevan.
“Through joint multilateral training, Eagle Partner 2026 strengthens interoperability, supports the exchange of best practices, and enhances peacekeeping readiness,” read a separate statement released by the U.S. Embassy in Yerevan.
The embassy said that the annual joint drills, which were first held in 2023, will also build on “longstanding U.S.-Armenia defense cooperation.”
Russian denounced the pervious U.S.-Armenian drills that highlighted a reorientation of the Armenian government’s foreign policy towards the West. Russian-Armenian tensions rose further in the run-up to Armenia’s June 7 parliamentary elections. Moscow banned multimillion-dollar imports of Armenian agricultural products and beverages as it pressed Yerevan to choose between seeking to join the European Union or remaining part of a Russian-led economic bloc.
Prime Minister Nikol Pashinian’s government signaled its intention to continue moving closer to the EU after its victory in the disputed elections. Foreign Minister Ararat Mirzoyan made a point of attending a meeting of the EU’s top diplomats in Luxembourg on Monday.
Pashinian also enjoys the strong backing of the current U.S. administration. U.S. President Donald Trump endorsed him for reelection on May 28 two days after U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio’s brief visit to Yerevan.
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Armenian Expats Set To Lose Voting Rights
- Shoghik Galstian
The ruling Civil Contract party has drafted legislation that would effectively disenfranchise hundreds of thousands of Armenian nationals living abroad and Russia in particular.
For more than two decades, such citizens have been legally allowed to vote only in polling stations inside Armenia. A bill which Prime Minister Nikol Pashinian’s party plans to push through the outgoing Armenian parliament later this month stipulates that they will lose voting rights if they have stayed in the country for less than six months during a year preceding elections. This restriction will not apply to Armenian diplomats and students enrolled in foreign universities.
One of the co-sponsors of the bill, Alkhas Ghazarian, on Wednesday linked it to the June 7 parliamentary elections. But she refused to elaborate.
In the weeks leading up to the elections, Pashinian’s aides and political allies claimed that Armenian expats in Russia are paid to travel to Armenia and vote for the main opposition Strong Armenia alliance led by Russian-Armenian billionaire Samvel Karapetian. They did not offer any proof of the allegations.
They openly warned the expats and especially men not to come to their home country to cast ballots. A deputy chief of Pashinian’s staff and a news website controlled by Civil Contract said that the men would be called up for short military service on their arrival. In a clearly related development, military police officers were deployed at Yerevan’s Zvartnots airport on the eve of the polls.
Ruling party figures have not said how many expats entered Armenia from Russia in May and early June and whether their number was up from the year-earlier period. Ghazarian pointed to the case of one such expat, Hovannes Sahakian, who got himself into trouble after flying to Armenia together with his wife and children on election day.
Sahakian told a local TV channel at Zvartnots that they will fly back to Russia hours after casting ballots because they fear post-election unrest. Shortly afterwards, he was arrested and charged with failure to alert relevant authorities about a planned “usurpation of power” in Armenia. Sahakian, who was later freed but banned from leaving the country, denies the accusation decried by Armenian opposition figures.
In March, the Armenian authorities claimed that a foreign, presumably Russian, intelligence service is pressuring wealthy Armenians doing business abroad to support opposition forces challenging Pashinian. The Investigative Committee opened a relevant criminal case at the time. Nobody is known to have been indicted in that probe.
The Civil Contract bill has led to speculation that Pashinian’s party may be gearing up for fresh elections because of its failure to secure a two-thirds majority in the parliament, which is necessary for enacting a new Armenian constitution demanded by Azerbaijan. Ghazarian dismissed the speculation.
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RFE/RL – Pashinian Vows To ‘Crush’ Top Opposition Leaders
- Ruzanna Stepanian
- Astghik Bedevian
Prime Minister Nikol Pashinian pledged on Wednesday to “crush” the leaders of Armenia’s three main opposition groups that won at least 37 percent of the vote in the June 7 parliamentary elections.
In what critics denounced as death threats, Pashinian already vowed to “take out” former President Robert Kocharian and businessmen Samvel Karapetian and Gagik Tsarukian during the election campaign. He lashed out at them again during the final session of the outgoing Armenian parliament boycotted by opposition lawmakers.
“As long as I am prime minister, I will crush them in a targeted manner, I will crush them in a targeted manner,” he said. “I call on those citizens who do not agree with this line to stage a revolution in Armenia and change the government … There is no other way to stop this process.”
Pashinian doubled down on his threats to jail Kocharian, Karapetian and Tsarukian after their opposition groups rejected as fraudulent the official election results giving victory in the elections. Prosecutors charged Tsarukian with tax evasion before asking the Central Election Commission (CEC) to allow them to also indict Kocharian.
The commission headed by a longtime Pashinian collaborator gave the green the light for new criminal charges against the 71-year-old ex-president later on Wednesday. The charges were still not publicized by the Office of the Prosecutor-General. According to one of Kocharian’s lawyers, Aram Orbelian, they stem from a property deal approved by a former Armenian government in 2004 during his presidency.
“Mr. Robert Kocharian has no connection with that transaction, and his family members have no connection either,” he told reporters.
Orbelian linked the criminal case to ongoing “political processes” in the country. He also stressed that the statute of limitations for it has long expired.
This might explain why the prosecutors did not ask the CEC for permission to arrest Kocharian. They sought such permission against four other opposition election candidates.
One of them, Davit Ghazinian, is a senior member of Karapetian’s Strong Armenia alliance. The CEC allowed on Wednesday Ghazinian’s arrest on vote-buying charges strongly denied by him.
The official election results, which the three opposition forces will challenge in the Constitutional Court, showed Pashinian’s Civil Contract party winning 49.8 percent of the vote. Strong Armenia came in second with 23.3 percent, followed by Kocharian’s Hayastan that got almost 10 percent.
For its part, Tsarukian’s Prosperous Armenia Party (BHK) fell just short of a 4 percent legal threshold for entering the new Armenian parliament after the CEC cancelled results in three precincts and refused to rerun elections there. The BHK as well as Strong Armenia and Hayastan bloc portrayed the controversial decision as further proof that the vote was rigged in the ruling party’s favor.
Pashinian denies the opposition allegations and accuses the opposition of having garnered hundreds of thousands of votes with bribes.
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Davit Ghazinyan detained on suspicion of preparing to distribute election brib
Davit Ghazinyan, a parliamentary candidate from the Strong Armenia Alliance, has been detained on charges of preparing to distribute election bribes.
The information was confirmed by Armenia’s Anti-Corruption Committee. Earlier, the Central Electoral Commission approved motions submitted by the Prosecutor’s Office seeking consent to initiate criminal proceedings against Ghazinyan and to place him under detention.
On 6 June, the Prosecutor’s Office submitted requests to the CEC seeking permission to launch criminal prosecution against Ghazinyan and to deprive him of his liberty.
The Anti-Corruption Committee had announced the same day that it had uncovered a new alleged case of election bribery involving members of the Strong Armenia Alliance. Following the discovery, the committee applied to the Prosecutor’s Office requesting that motions be submitted to the CEC to obtain consent for criminal proceedings against Ghazinyan and for his detention.
Published by Armenpress, original at
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CEC greenlights indictment and arrest of Strong Armenia candidate accused of v
The Central Electoral Commission on Wednesday greenlighted the prosecution’s request to indict and arrest Davit Ghazinyan, a parliamentary candidate who ran for office on the Strong Armenia ticket, his fellow bloc member and lawyer Aram Vartevanyan has said.
Under the law, authorities must obtain the Electoral Commission’s consent before charging or arresting registered parliamentary candidates.
Ghazinyan is suspected of involvement in a vote-buying scheme.
He denies wrongdoing.
The Anti-Corruption Committee said on June 6 that it had uncovered new cases of alleged vote-buying by members of the Strong Armenia bloc. On the same day, the law enforcement agency asked the prosecution to request that the CEC strip Ghazinyan of immunity.
Published by Armenpress, original at
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CEC approves request to lift Robert Kocharyan’s immunity
Armenia’s Central Election Commission (CEC) has approved a request by the Prosecutor General’s Office to lift the parliamentary immunity of Robert Kocharyan, leader of the Armenia Alliance.
The decision was announced by lawyer Aram Orbelyan following the CEC meeting.
Orbelyan said Kocharyan is expected to be charged with abuse of official authority and money laundering.
Earlier, the lawyer explained that the Prosecutor General’s Office had sought the CEC’s consent within the framework of a case related to a transaction approved by the Armenian government in 2004 during Kocharyan’s presidency.
According to Orbelyan, the transaction has never been legally challenged and neither Kocharyan nor members of his family were involved in it.
He said that in 2008, after Kocharyan had left office, his son, Sedrak Kocharyan, purchased a stake in the company involved in the transaction, paying what he described as a substantial sum. Prosecutors are now allegedly attempting to link that purchase to the 2004 deal.
“The case concerns the Master Class tennis complex. The property had been leased, and the tenant had begun construction using its own funds. In 2008, facing financial difficulties, the company sought investors and made an offer to Sedrak Kocharyan, who subsequently became involved in the project,” Orbelyan said.
On June 16, it was announced that the Prosecutor General’s Office had formally requested the CEC’s consent to lift Kocharyan’s immunity.
The Armenia Alliance, led by Kocharyan, passed the electoral threshold in the June 7 parliamentary elections and is set to hold 12 seats in the new parliament. As the head of the alliance’s electoral list, Kocharyan enjoys legal protections that require CEC approval before criminal proceedings can be initiated against him or restrictions placed on his liberty.
Published by Armenpress, original at
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Lawyer details case in request to strip Kocharyan of immunity
Former President Robert Kocharyan’s lawyer Aram Orbelyan has explained the case behind a Prosecutor’s Office request to the Central Electoral Commission seeking permission to lift his immunity and file charges.
The Prosecutor’s Office of Armenia has submitted a motion to the Central Electoral Commission seeking consent to strip Robert Kocharyan, leader of the opposition Armenia Alliance and former President of Armenia, of immunity. The Armenia Alliance won 12 seats in the parliamentary elections, and Kocharyan is the number one candidate on the alliance list.
Orbelyan told reporters on Wednesday that the case concerns a transaction carried out in 2004 during Kocharyan’s presidency, which was approved by the Government of Armenia.
Orbelyan argued that the transaction has never been disputed and that neither Robert Kocharyan nor his family members have any connection to it.
“Later, in 2008, when Mr. Robert Kocharyan was no longer in office, his son Sedrak Kocharyan purchased a share in the company, paying a fairly large sum. And now they are trying to somehow link this to the 2004 transaction. This concerns the ‘Master Class’ tennis facility,” Orbelyan said.
He noted that the area had been leased, and the tenant began development using their own funds but, in 2008, faced financial difficulties and, while seeking investment, also approached Sedrak Kocharyan, who took part in the process accordingly.
Orbelyan denied any wrongdoing in the process.
Published by Armenpress, original at
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Armenia, EU discuss expanded cooperation in defense, space sectors
Armenian Minister of High-Tech Industry Mkhitar Hayrapetyan has met with European Commissioner for Defense and Space Andrius Kubilius in Paris.
Hayrapetyan said on social media that they discussed prospects for expanding Armenia–EU cooperation in the fields of the defense industry, innovation, space security, and Earth observation.
“We also discussed prospects for cooperation with the European Commission’s Directorate-General for Defense Industry and Space (DG DEFIS), as well as the possibility of implementing joint initiatives in the high-tech and defense sectors,” Hayrapetyan said.
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