Russia’s ambassador to Armenia, Sergei Kopyrkin, told RFE/RL’s Armenian Service on Wednesday that Pashinian is among the leaders of “fraternal countries” invited to the May 9 parade. Kopyrkin said he does not know whether Pashinian will travel to Moscow.

Pashinian announced later in the day that he and senior members of his Civil Contract party will be in Armenia’s Syunik province on May 8 and May 9 to campaign for next month’s parliamentary elections.

The Armenian premier, who attended last year’s Victory Day parade in Moscow, most recently visited the Russian capital on April 1 for what turned out to be tense talks with Russian President Vladimir Putin. The latter warned Pashinian against disqualifying Armenian opposition forces from the June 7 elections. Putin also warned of severe economic consequences of Yerevan’s continued efforts to join the European Union.

Pashinian reaffirmed the pro-Western tilt in Armenia’s foreign policy during a European Political Community summit and a separate EU-Armenia summit held in Yerevan earlier this week. He made clear on Tuesday that he will keep seeking EU membership if his party wins the upcoming polls.

—

Simonian, who is a leading member of Pashinian’s Civil Contract party, first made the accusation in a weekend interview with Armenian state television.

“While in Ukraine they are trying to advance their interests through military means, in Armenia there is an attempt at a political operation, an attempt to seize power,” he claimed. “Now they are trying to use our democracy against us. They say, ‘The Internet is free in your country, we will buy so much advertising on that Internet with our rubles that it will be ours.’”

“We will not allow the Republic of Armenia to be turned into a ‘gubernia’ (a Russian province), we will not be governed like Belarus,” he said.

Moscow has still not reacted to the accusations, unlike the Belarusian Foreign Ministry that summoned the Armenian charge d’affaires in Minsk on Tuesday to hand him a protest note against Yerevan’s “latest unfriendly actions.” Also, a ministry spokesman described Simonian’s jibe as “pre-election populism.”

The Armenian speaker stood by his claims on Wednesday, telling reporters that “the example of Belarus’s governance is unacceptable to my country.”

“An attempt to seize power is underway,” he said in another attack on Moscow.

Simonian’s statements came right before and after two European summits in Yerevan seen by the Armenian opposition as a pre-election show of support for Pashinian and his party. Opposition leaders also claim that Pashinian keeps dragging Armenia into the West’s geopolitical standoff with Russia and thus adding to the country’s grave security challenges.

Meeting with Pashinian in Moscow on April 1, Russian President Vladimir Putin implied that Armenia would pay a heavy economic price for its government’s continued drift to the European Union. Putin also warned Yerevan against barring what he called pro-Russian opposition groups from running in the June 7 parliamentary elections.

The three main opposition election contenders are led by Russian-Armenian billionaire Samvel Karapetian, former President Robert Kocharian and another wealthy businessman, Gagik Tsarukian. Pashinian’s political allies have branded them as Russian agents.

Pashinian sought to downplay Russian-Armenian tensions following his most recent talks with Putin. Simonian’s remarks could reignite them.

—

Ishkhanian also effectively joined fellow prisoner Ruben Vardanyan in calling on Armenia’s human rights ombudswoman, Anahit Manasian, to visit them and the other captives in an Azerbaijani prison. He said Manasian would thus receive more information about “blatant violations” of human rights and international law which he said occurred during the trials and criminal investigations that preceded them.

“As for these difficult times, I can only wish our people strength of spirit, will and unity, and I must say: be strong,” added the statement.

The former Karabakh Armenian leaders were captured right after the 2023 Azerbaijani offensive that restored Baku’s full control over Karabakh and forced the region’s Armenian population to flee to Armenia. They all denied a long list of war crimes charges levelled against them. An Azerbaijani military court sentenced five of them, including Ishkhanian, to life imprisonment and gave Vardanyan and the two others 20-year jail sentences in February this year at the end of two trials denounced by Amnesty International as a “travesty.”

Ishkhanian, who served as Karabakh’s parliament speaker, cited the following excerpt from his concluding remarks at his trial which he said were cut short by the presiding judge: “This trial was opened not against 15 persons, this trial was opened against the Armenian people and the Armenian statehood with clear aims and a long-term strategy.”

Ishkhanian also asked Manasian to try to obtain the full text of the guilty verdict against him and share it with his family in Armenia. He said he handed in the same request to the Azerbaijani ombudswoman, Sabina Aliyeva, when she visited him in prison on Tuesday.

Vardanyan, who held the second-highest post in Karabakh’s leadership from November 2022 to February 2023, appealed to Manasian in a statement released by his family on April 21. The prominent businessman urged her to ask Azerbaijani authorities for permission to visit the prisoners together with their relatives. The human rights defender responded by saying that she has no mandate to inspect prison conditions in Azerbaijan or any other foreign nation.

Vardanyan, who has repeatedly made defiant statements during his captivity, also accused Armenia’s government of being indifferent to the fate of the 19 Armenian prisoners held by Baku. The government has still not officially reacted to the trials, stoking opposition allegations about its complicity in their continuing captivity. Prime Minister Nikol Pashinian and other Armenian officials insist that Yerevan has been doing its best to try to secure their release.

Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev again branded the Armenian prisoners as “war criminals” when he addressed on Monday a European Political Community summit in Yerevan via video link. Pashinian did not respond to Aliyev, drawing strong criticism from the Armenian opposition.

—

The Russian Foreign Ministry was particularly outraged by Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy’s participation in one of those summits and his implicit threats to disrupt the upcoming Victory Day parade in Moscow with long-range drone strikes.

“Russian society, with deep indignation and bewilderment, not only saw but, above all, remembered the fact that Armenia, which we are accustomed to considering a friendly, fraternal country, served as a platform. For whom? For a terrorist,” the ministry spokeswoman, Maria Zakharova, told a weekly briefing.

“And no one in Armenia’s current leadership rebuked Zelenskyy,” Zakharova said.

Zelenskyy met with Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinian on the sidelines of Monday’s European Political Community (EPC) summit attended by dozens of EU leaders. He said afterwards that Kyiv and Yerevan are “resuming an active dialogue between our countries.”

The EPC gathering was followed by a separate EU-Armenia summit between Pashinian and the EU’s two top officials, Antonio Costa and Ursula von der Leyen. The latter declared that the EU’s ties with the South Caucasus nation traditionally allied to Russia are now “closer than ever.”

“After reading the final declaration of the so-called Armenia-EU summit, it becomes clear that the republic, with the approval of its leadership, is being increasingly drawn into alien, aggressively Euro-Atlantic standards and mechanisms,” charged Zakharova. “This course of action by the Armenian authorities will sooner or later lead to Yerevan’s irreversible involvement in Brussels’ anti-Russian line, with all the ensuing political and economic consequences for Armenia.”

“Armenia is included in the plans for the militarization of Europe,” the Russian official said without elaborating.

Zakharova went on to claim that Pashinian thus reneged on his pledge to “take no steps against Russia” given to Russian President Vladimir Putin during their April 1 talks in Moscow.

The talks were marked by Putin’s public warnings to Yerevan. Armenia would pay a massive economic price for its government’s continued drift to the EU, Putin implied, noting its heavy dependence on Russia for trade and energy.

Pashinian sought to downplay Russian-Armenian tensions in the following weeks. But one of his top political allies, parliament speaker Alen Simonian, accused Moscow on May 2 of trying to topple Pashinian’s government through Armenian opposition groups running in the June 7 parliamentary elections. Zakharova dismissed the accusations, saying that Simonian made very different statements when he visited Moscow in February.

—

“The government of Armenia has failed to establish any sustainable and coherent mechanism for communication with them — neither through third-party countries, including the embassies of states with a presence in Baku, nor through international organizations,” Vardanyan said in his latest statement conveyed to his family by phone.

“Why? Why can Armenian officials travel to Azerbaijan on trade, economic, and other matters, but cannot organize a visit concerning the lives, health, and legal situation of Armenian captives? Is the fate of these people not more important than trade negotiations?” he asked.

Vardanyan said that many of the prisoners “have no adequate clothing and no way to receive what they genuinely need.”

“Instead, whatever assistance does reach them is organized informally, without transparency, and without regard for the actual needs of the detainees … When people who have no teeth are sent dried fruit, that is not help. That is humiliation,” he said.

“Have you no shame?” he went on, appealing to Prime Minister Nikol Pashinian. “Is there no shame in receiving a peace prize [in the United Arab Emirates,] speaking of peace, and accepting applause while citizens of Armenia remain in Baku’s prisons without proper protection, systemic support, assistance or oversight from their own state?”

Vardanyan, who held the second-highest post in Nagorno-Karabakh’s leadership from November 2022 to February 2023, similarly criticized Pashinian’s government in his previous statement from an Azerbaijani jail circulated by his family on April 21. He also called on Armenia’s human rights ombudswoman, Anahit Manasian, to try to visit the Armenian prisoners together with their relatives.

Manasian responded by saying that she has no mandate to inspect prison conditions in Azerbaijan or any other foreign nation. She reiterated her position in the Armenian parliament on Thursday.

“If the protection of Armenian citizens held in Azerbaijani prisons does not fall within the mandate of Armenia’s human rights defender, then whose mandate is it?” countered Vardanyan.

Vardanyan was arrested at an Azerbaijani checkpoint in the Lachin corridor in September 2023 as he fled the region along with its practically entire ethnic Armenian population. Seven other former Karabakh Armenian leaders were also arrested during the exodus that followed an Azerbaijani military offensive.

Five of them were sentenced to life imprisonment while the two others as well as Vardanyan received 20-year jail sentences in February at the end of yearlong trials denounced by Amnesty International as a “travesty.” They all denied a long list of accusations brought against them.

Pashinian and other Armenian officials insist that Yerevan has been doing its best to try to secure the release of the prisoners. Their critics dismiss these assurances. They accused the Armenian premier of actually helping Baku legitimize Vardanyan’s imprisonment with his scathing comments about the 57-year-old billionaire and philanthropist made in August 2024.

—