June: 16, 2026
In the “Pressing” program Satik Seyranyan the guest is Naira Zohrabyan is.
The main theses of the interview are below.
- In my journalistic and political biography, I have not seen elections of this quality, which were accompanied by total terror, hate speech and threats before the elections. In essence, these people, the government, are declaring that those who did not vote for them elected the opposition with a bribe. All of us, in fact, are called bribe-takers. If what happened during these elections had a component during the previous government, we would get the assessments that the OSCE/ODIHR gives during rigged elections. But this time nothing like that happened.
- During the years of working in his newspaper, “Haykakan Zhamanak”, Nikol used to say to Vahagn Hovakimyan: What kind of journalist, plasterer from the file bazaar, will write better than you? Now Vahagn, in fact, has well mastered the nuances of plastering:
- I will cut off my hand if Armenia becomes a member of the European Union in the next 50 years. In a few days, EU Enlargement Commissioner Martha Kos is coming to Armenia, and I am sure that there will be no talk of shameful elections. Instead, once again my beloved Babken Tunyan’s neighbor Poghos will say: we will get it for free… But when you ask what you will do to get it, there is no answer.
- Villagers in whole villages are squealing under loans, losing crops, resellers take the goods for pennies, sell them at high prices, but the villagers do not speak, they are afraid, they say that we are not involved in politics. How did it happen that the flower appeared in “Yerevan City” instead of Europe?:
- Dear peasants, I have never seen a European who buys apricots for 40 euros per kilogram. And if by some miracle your apricot reaches Europe, its cost will be just that much.
- The people went and voted, an unprecedented turnout in the last 3 elections, and Nicoll did not get a constitutional majority. The people went and rejected this regimen, and we all understood that reproduction was a matter of life for Nicole. Today, the Azerbaijani establishment is counting how many votes Pashinyan needs in this parliament to get a constitutional majority, and they hope that he will achieve it.
- The opposition forces that passed the parliament will have to do jewelry work to prevent kidnapping from their lists, so that the Azeri dream will not come true.:
- For the international community, it is extremely important for the opposition to take the mandates, to have that vignette: the government-opposition image. Nikol was given a task: if you want, intimidate, if you want, ask, make the opposition come to the Parliament alone. I am not saying that mandates should not be taken, because I do not see the electrified energy with which it is possible to generate the street. One can be very honest and say that one does not exclude the other: one can both take a mandate and start a street fight.
- The oppositionists who passed the Parliament also say that this Parliament is not legitimate. If it is not legitimate, you are taking the mandates, so what should you do to legitimize the illegitimate institution in front of the world? So, the opposition faces a very difficult choice.
- 10 days have passed since the elections, but the opposition leaders are still silent. This silence is not understandable. What are they waiting for, the decision of the CC? At the moment, I haven’t heard any words formulated with real substance that we are taking the mandates, we are going to the National Assembly to continue the struggle there as well.
- Do you rule out that there may be Gehamnazarians in the lists? Very risky. The opposition must consider all possible force majeure, including the fact that Nicole will steal a man from them. You can’t stand up and heroically declare that people won’t be stolen from me. Yes, Nikol has not fulfilled the commitment he made to Aliyev, Erdogan and the West, so the opposition has to go with the worst case scenario: what will I do if someone is stolen from my list? Gegham Nazaryan and Ishkhan Zakaryan were born from the same gulf of trust:
- We understand that we are sitting on an exploding barrel, and every day there can be this social riot, because every day you cannot deceive people that your rose went to Poland, but they appear in “Yerevan City” for 1445 drams. Relations with Russia are increasingly strained. Yesterday, when it became known about the visit of Martha Kos, Naryshkin made a statement, again urging the Armenian people to consider the consequences that may be for Armenia if Armenia continues its flirtation with the EU and continues its anti-Russian curtseys.:
- I would like that there is no pressure on the opposition and let them make their own decisions, but, I repeat, all risks must be taken into account. It was bad, but it turns out they didn’t have a Plan B. But there is still time, you can have that plan, otherwise they will become мальчик для битья once again. Any solution has to reflect the end point of how we get Nicole to resign, and it shouldn’t drag on until 2031. There is no need to go to the National Assembly and ask Nikol heroic questions, so that he will pack them and include them in his agenda.
- We buy Russian gas at the border for 177 dollars, Russia will increase the price and sell it to us for 700 euros. Can you imagine what will happen then? Armenia’s economy will be destroyed in a free fall regime, and the citizens of Armenia will remain under its ruins. Everything started like this in Ukraine.
- If your gas valve is in the hands of Aliyev, it will be the easiest way to blow up the country from the inside.
- Hikmet Hajiyev is one of the most ardent, most hateful anti-Armenians, and that’s what Ruben Vardanyan invested so much in Dilijan. I am sure that Hajiyev specifically demanded to be taken to Dilijan. It is surprising when the first official foreign delegation that entered Armenia after the elections is Azerbaijani. Nikol Pashinyan did not get what was expected of him and the game is just beginning. The Anti-Nicolasian Camp worked with jeweler’s precision:
- Nicole’s hourglass is overturned. Nicole is running out of time. the time has come to pay the “debts”, but it will be at the expense of our homeland and our sovereignty, so the time has also come for the consolidation of our entire opposition field and for taking united steps. They will, yes, the game will just start, no, then it’s game over:
Details in the video.
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RFE/RL – Prosecutors Move To Indict Kocharian
- Naira Bulghadarian
Following Prime Minister Nikol Pashinian’s repeated pledges to have the leaders of Armenia’s main opposition groups imprisoned, prosecutors have asked the Central Election Commission (CEC) for permission to bring more criminal charges against former President Robert Kocharian.
The Office of the Prosecutor-General declined to reveal the charges on Tuesday. It said that as part of the same criminal case it also asked the CEC to allow the indictment and arrest of two other men who ran in the June 7 parliamentary elections on the ticket of Kocharian’s Hayastan alliance.
The CEC permission is necessary because the three oppositionists technically remain election candidates. It was not immediately clear when the commission dominated by government loyalists will discuss the prosecutors’ petitions. It has already allowed law-enforcement authorities to prosecute several other opposition candidates.
On Sunday, Armenia’s National Security Service (NSS) did not allow Kocharian to leave the country as he was about to board a flight to Russia. The NSS and the prosecutors have still not given a reason for the travel condemned by Kocharian’s office as illegal.
Kocharian is already standing trial for his role in a 2008 post-election unrest in Yerevan. The judge presiding over the trial has not banned him from traveling abroad. Kocharian’s spokesman Bagrat Mikoyan, said that the 71-year-old ex-president does not yet know any details of more charges “fabricated” against him.
The prosecutors are not seeking an arrest warrant for Kocharian yet. As he wrapped up his election campaign in Yerevan on June 5, Pashinian announced that Kocharian will be arrested again “right after the elections.”
On the campaign trail, the Armenian premier has also vowed to jail Samvel Karapetian and Gagik Tsarukian, wealthy businessmen leading the two other major opposition groups that challenged the ruling Civil Contract party in the elections. Amid growing opposition allegations of electoral fraud, Pashinian also reaffirmed late last week his pledges to “dispossess” the three top opposition leaders.
“Bread must taste like candy to them so that it doesn’t occur to them to hand out vote bribes anymore,” he said. “This is our political agenda, and in this sense our revolution cannot be a velvet one anymore.”
Critics say such statements only prove that law-enforcement authorities are acting on Pashinian’s illegal orders. Scores of opposition members and supporters have been arrested during the parliamentary race.
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More Armenian Opposition Groups To Challenge Election Results In Court
- Ruzanna Stepanian
Two more opposition parties announced on Tuesday that they will ask Armenia’s Constitutional Court to invalidate the official results of the June 7 parliamentary election rejected by them as fraudulent.
The parties led by former human rights ombudsman Arman Tatoyan and fugitive video blogger Vartan Ghukasian claimed that Prime Minister Nikol Pashinian’s Civil Contract rigged the ballot primarily by abusing its government levers and using public money to buy votes.
“On the eve of the June 7 elections, we saw this government do ten times more than what the previous authorities were accused of,” charged Liparit Drmeyan, a senior representative of Tatoyan’s Wings of Unity party.
“An unprecedented amount of administrative resources were used throughout the entire election campaign,” said Drmeyan, who served until last August as the top government lawyer representing Armenia in international courts.
Speaking at a news conference, he said that Pashinian’s party violated campaign funding rules, forced public sector employees across the country to attend its rallies and vote for it, and incentivized other voters with cash handouts and tax exemptions.
According to the official election results, Wings of Unity and Ghukasian’s DOK party each won more than 2 percent of the vote. Only two opposition groups led by billionaire Samvel Karapetian and former President Robert Kocharian easily passed a 4 percent legal threshold for entering the new Armenian parliament.
Another major opposition party led by Gagik Tsarukian fell just short of that threshold after the Central Election Commission (CEC) cancelled results in three precincts and refused to rerun elections there. The Prosperous Armenia Party (BHK) as well as Karapetian’s Strong Armenia alliance and Kocharian’s Hayastan bloc portrayed the controversial decision as further proof that the vote was rigged in the ruling party’s favor.
They too are planning to challenge the official results in the Constitutional Court. Their leaders seem skeptical about the success of their appeals, mindful of the fact that eight of the court’s nine judges have been installed by Pashinian’s party.
“Under these circumstances, we don’t find it right to appeal to Nikol Pashinian’s Constitutional Court,” said Edmon Marukian, whose Bright Armenia Party also regards the elections as fraudulent. “We are convinced that the judiciary is completely subordinate to Nikol Pashinian.”
Pashinian, who claimed victory when less than one-fifth of ballots cast were counted, has denied the fraud allegations. He claims that his main election challengers themselves bought hundreds of thousands of votes.
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RFE/RL – Armenian Village Official ‘Forced To Quit’ After Claiming Vote Manip
- Karine Simonian
A local government employee in a border village in northern Armenia claims to have been forced to resign after dismissing as misleading the official results of the June 7 parliamentary elections in her community.
They showed the ruling Civil Contract party winning 55 percent of votes cast in the village of Kirants that lost large swathes of land as a result of Prime Minister Nikol Pashinian’s territorial concessions to Azerbaijan in 2024. Many local residents protested against the unilateral handover at the time, triggering massive antigovernment demonstrations in Yerevan.
Pashinian’s political allies said the vote result demonstrates that most Kirants residents now support the Armenian government’s appeasement policy towards Azerbaijan. Gohar Vartanian, who has for years worked at the village administration, dismissed those statements in a June 8 Facebook post. The ruling party prevailed there only because of soldiers and border guards forced to vote for it in the local polling station, she claimed, urging opposition supporters in Yerevan to stop berating her fellow villagers.
“Dear government, you don’t give a damn about our people,” wrote Vartanian. “For you, the important thing is to show that people in Kirants are happy and grateful. Never mind what these people actually think and feel. Dear opposition people, stop making ordinary people scapegoats and try to look for problems elsewhere.”
The young woman, who has repeatedly criticized the government in the past, claims that she was ordered to resign after refusing to delete the post. In her resignation letter dated June 10, she said that she “can no longer be part of this morally corrupt system that violates my right to free speech.”
“I know that they wanted to fire me before, but this [post] was probably the last straw for them,” Vartanian told RFE/RL’s Armenian Service at the weekend.
“Their goal was to show that like in other border villages, people in Kirants are satisfied … and voted for the authorities,” she said. “But my post showed the opposite.”
Vartanian declined to specify who ordered her to quit her job. In her words, her immediate superior has also tendered resignation. She would say whether that superior is the village administration chief, Kamo Shahinian.
Kirants is part of a district comprising Pashinian’s hometown of Ijevan. The district administration headed by Civil Contract member Artur Chagharian has not yet commented on Vartanian’s claims. Chagharian did not answer weekend phone calls from RFE/RL’s Armenian Service.
The Armenian opposition has rejected as fraudulent the nationwide election results giving victory to Pashinian’s party. Pashinian has denied the fraud claims and accused his main election challengers of having bought hundreds of thousands of votes.
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Ruling party says political grounds exist for snap local elections in Gyumri
Vice Speaker of Parliament Ruben Rubinyan, a member of the Civil Contract party, said on Tuesday that, from a political standpoint, there are sufficient grounds to argue that the Gyumri City Council should be dissolved and new elections should be held.
“It is a fact that in the 2026 parliamentary elections, the Civil Contract party received more than 50 percent of the votes in Gyumri. Does this automatically, in a technical sense, mean that new local government elections should be held in Gyumri? No, it does not. But I believe that, politically, it means there are sufficient grounds to argue that the Gyumri City Council should be dissolved and new elections should be organized,” Rubinyan said.
He also drew attention to the fact that Gyumri Mayor Vardan Ghukasyan has been arrested on charges of taking a bribe.
According to Rubinyan, all of this clearly demonstrates that there is a crisis of legitimacy in Gyumri Municipality that needs to be resolved.
During a campaign rally in Gyumri as part of the pre-election campaign for Armenia’s June 7 parliamentary elections, Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan also spoke about the need to hold snap local elections in Gyumri.
Gyumri Mayor Vardan Ghukasyan has been in pre-trial detention since October 2025 on bribery charges, which he denies. The city has been governed by an acting mayor since then. Ghukasyan is also under investigation for allegedly plotting to seize power.
The Gyumri City Council elections were held on March 30, 2025.
Six political parties and three alliances participated in the Gyumri elections. Five of them surpassed the electoral threshold (4 percent for parties and 6 percent for alliances).
The results were as follows:
Civil Contract Party — 14 mandates (17,188 votes)
Communist Party of Armenia — 8 mandates (9,727 votes)
Our City alliance — 6 mandates (7,380 votes)
My Powerful Community party — 3 mandates (3,739 votes)
Mother Armenia alliance — 2 mandates (2,904 votes)
At the first session of the Gyumri City Council, held on April 16, 2025, Vardan Ghukasyan, the candidate of the Communist Party of Armenia, was elected mayor.
Published by Armenpress, original at
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Vice Speaker accuses opposition leaders of organizing vote-buying scheme
Vice Speaker of Parliament Ruben Rubinyan of the Civil Contract party accused opposition leaders on Tuesday of plotting and organizing vote-buying to secure votes in the June 7 parliamentary elections.
Speaking at a press briefing, Rubinyan called on law enforcement agencies to investigate the alleged vote-buying cases to the fullest extent.
He said that the leadership of the Strong Armenia bloc, the Armenia alliance, and the Prosperous Armenia party bear responsibility for the vote-buying.
“For me, and for any reasonable person, it is obvious that some lackey could not simply wake up one day and decide on his own to distribute vote-buying bribes to the residents of his apartment building. It is obvious that someone provided that money, and it is equally obvious that instructions were given along with it: ‘Here is the money; go and distribute it so that people will vote for us.’ For me, it is clear that the Strong Armenia bloc, the Armenia alliance, and the Prosperous Armenia party bear responsibility. It is also clear to me that the leadership of these political forces organized and directed this vote-buying scheme, and I call on law enforcement agencies to uncover the entire scheme,” Rubinyan said.
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Pashinyan: Armenian voters gave legitimacy to peace with Azerbaijan
Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan has stated that the peace achieved with Azerbaijan in 2025 gained legitimacy in 2026 through the choice and vote of the Armenian people in the parliamentary elections, which gave his party a majority in the next parliament.
Pashinyan made the remarks in parliament during a hearing on the 2025 budget execution report.
According to Pashinyan, 2025 saw the establishment of foundations that allow Armenia to move toward a new agenda — the agenda of building a state of a new quality.
“I consider it significant that in 2025 we established the foundations that allow us to say that we can transition to a new agenda that we have formulated, including during the 2026 parliamentary elections, as an agenda for building a state of a new quality,” Pashinyan said.
The prime minister highlighted the fact that in 2025 Armenia and Azerbaijan announced the completion of negotiations and the finalization of the draft agreement on peace and the establishment of interstate relations.
This, he said, made possible the establishment of peace on August 8, 2025, in Washington, with the participation and initiative of U.S. President Donald Trump.
“We must ultimately acknowledge that 2025 was the year when we fully recorded that we have peace, we have established peace, and, essentially, we have the end of the conflict between the Republic of Armenia and the Republic of Azerbaijan,” the prime minister noted.
According to Pashinyan, the results of the 2026 parliamentary elections showed that the Armenian people reaffirmed their support for the peace agenda.
“We must record that in 2026 this fact received legitimacy and was reaffirmed through the choice and vote made by the people of the Republic of Armenia. Through the results of the 2026 elections, the people of the Republic of Armenia stood by peace,” Pashinyan said.
The prime minister said that 2025 could be considered the best year of revolutionary governance, while in the following years the government should strive to record the best year of post-revolutionary governance every year.
Pashinyan also addressed the parameters of the 2026 state budget, saying they provide grounds for optimism regarding the overperformance of revenue targets.
“The parameters of the 2026 state budget give us optimism that in 2026 we will significantly exceed our planned revenues. This is primarily connected with the economic indicators we recorded in 2025,” the prime minister said.
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Armenia’s economy grows as state budget revenues double, Pashinyan says
Compared with 2017, Armenia’s state budget tax revenues increased by 135% in 2025, Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan said.
Speaking in parliament during discussions on the government’s annual report on the implementation of the 2025 state budget, Pashinyan said that Armenia had crossed an important turning point.
“Compared with 2017, we have increased state budget tax revenues by 135%. This means that we can now confidently state that in the eight years following the revolution, the tax revenues of the state budget of the Republic of Armenia have doubled,” Pashinyan said.
The Prime Minister explained that 2017 was chosen as the comparison year because it was the final year before the 2018 Velvet Revolution.
According to him, in 2024 it was also technically possible to speak of a doubling of tax revenues, as they had increased by 106% compared with 2017. However, he said that such an assessment was somewhat formal, because the impact of inflation must also be taken into account when analyzing tax revenues.
“After excluding the cumulative inflation recorded since 2017, we can say that 2025 is the year when, by all measures, we doubled the state budget’s tax revenues compared with 2017,” the Prime Minister noted.
According to Pashinyan, this is not only a numerical indicator but also has important economic significance. He emphasized that the growth in tax revenues is primarily the result of economic growth.
The Prime Minister also noted that during the same period, Armenia’s GDP had more than doubled.
“This is a very significant indicator and demonstrates the scale and strength of our economy,” Pashinyan said.
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Pashinyan: AI development in Armenia requires new energy generation capacity
Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan said on Tuesday that the development of AI factories in Armenia is increasing electricity consumption and creating a need to generate additional energy capacity.
Speaking in parliament during a discussion of the government’s 2025 state budget execution report, the Prime Minister highlighted that on August 8, 2025, a memorandum of understanding on cooperation in the fields of artificial intelligence and technology was signed between Armenia and the United States in Washington.
Despite being widely criticized by the Armenian opposition as having no real significance, the document has since produced concrete results, Pashinyan said.
“Only 10 months have passed, and at Yerevan State University we already have an artificial intelligence center and a supercomputer. In the Gagarin settlement, we have an artificial intelligence factory,” Pashinyan said, referring to the Eleveight AI project.
He said that a second artificial intelligence factory — Firebird’s megaproject — is planned to be established in Hrazdan in June–July. He noted that through the investment program of Firebird alone, Armenia has an investment potential of $5 billion.
At the same time, Pashinyan emphasized that these developments are creating new challenges for Armenia, as artificial intelligence factories significantly increase electricity consumption.
“Only a year or a year and a half ago, we could have considered that we had a significant electricity surplus and needed to find ways to consume it. Today, we already need to think about what new generation capacities we should create,” the Prime Minister said.
He said the government is already taking concrete steps in this direction. Pashinyan noted that the European Union has reaffirmed its readiness to provide accelerated support for the development of energy storage facilities in Armenia.
“This means that we are moving with major steps toward greater energy independence and more reliable energy security,” the Prime Minister said.
According to Pashinyan, Armenia has significant potential in the field of solar energy, and opportunities to realize that potential are becoming increasingly tangible.
The Prime Minister added that the government has already adopted a program aimed at encouraging the installation of energy storage facilities in the private and industrial sectors.
Published by Armenpress, original at
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Pashinyan calls for measures to prevent vote-buying forces from gaining politi
Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan said that guarantees must be created to ensure that political forces involved in vote-buying do not have the opportunity to gain political influence in Armenia.
Speaking in parliament during debates on the government’s 2025 budget execution report, Pashinyan said that Armenia has managed twice — in 2021 and 2026 — under difficult circumstances, to ensure citizens’ free _expression_ of their will.
“We have managed twice, under extremely difficult conditions, to ensure the _expression_ of the will of the citizens of the Republic of Armenia. Let me remind you what kind of environment we held the parliamentary elections in 2021, and as a result of those elections, the citizens of the Republic of Armenia had the opportunity to freely express their will,” the Prime Minister said.
Citizens also had the opportunity to freely express their will during the 2026 parliamentary elections, but new challenges emerged during the electoral process, he said.
The Prime Minister said that responding to these challenges and creating proper mechanisms should become an important part of the upcoming political agenda.
“We must already create guarantees today so that political forces distributing election bribes and operating according to that logic have no chance of having any political influence in the Republic of Armenia,” Pashinyan said.
Referring to the opposition that will be formed in the next parliament, the Prime Minister stated that, in his assessment, it was formed as a result of illegal activities.
“Essentially, the parliamentary opposition being formed in the 9th convocation of the National Assembly is a political entity that has been formed entirely as a result of illegal activities,” Pashinyan said.
According to the Prime Minister, it is the legitimate right of the Republic of Armenia to deprive relevant circles of the opportunity to continue political activities.
“It is the legitimate right of the Republic of Armenia to prevent these processes and these circles from continuing political activities, and for this purpose Armenia must take measures,” the Prime Minister said.
Pashinyan emphasized that this commitment was also assumed and reaffirmed during the pre-election campaign for the 2026 parliamentary elections.
The Prime Minister also noted that citizens have raised the question of why these issues have not yet been resolved. According to Pashinyan, resolving such issues was significantly more difficult in the absence of peace.
Three political forces entered parliament as a result of the June 7 elections: the Civil Contract party, which will receive 64 seats; the Strong Armenia alliance, which will receive 29 seats; and the Armenia alliance, which will receive 12 seats.
Throughout the campaign period, Armenia’s Anti-Corruption Committee repeatedly reported the discovery of cases involving alleged vote-buying by representatives of the Strong Armenia alliance, the Armenia alliance, and the Prosperous Armenia party, also presenting audio recordings as evidence. The Prosperous Armenia party received less than 4% of the vote and failed to enter parliament.
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