Russia has sharpened its warning to Armenia over the costs of drifting westward, threatening to withdraw preferential fuel agreements if Yerevan continues its tentative march towards the European Union — a sign that the Kremlin is no longer prepared to tolerate ambiguity in the South Caucasus.

The warning, delivered days before Armenia’s parliamentary election on June 7th, underscores how the region has become another front in the broader geopolitical struggle between Moscow and the West. For Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan, who has spent the past two years distancing his country from Russia after the collapse of Armenian control in Nagorno-Karabakh, the message from the Kremlin was blunt: closer ties with Brussels could come at a steep economic price.

For decades, Armenia was among Russia’s closest post-Soviet allies, hosting Russian military facilities and participating in Moscow-led political and economic structures such as the Eurasian Economic Union and the Collective Security Treaty Organisation. But relations deteriorated sharply after Azerbaijan’s 2023 military offensive in Nagorno-Karabakh, when many Armenians concluded that Russia had failed to honour its role as security guarantor.

Since then, Pashinyan’s government has sought to cultivate stronger links with Washington and Brussels. Earlier this week, US Secretary of State Marco Rubio signed a strategic partnership agreement in Yerevan, signalling growing American interest in the South Caucasus.

Armenia has also formally launched an EU accession process, a move welcomed rhetorically by European officials but viewed with open hostility in Moscow. Russian officials have repeatedly insisted that membership of the EU and the Eurasian Economic Union are incompatible, accusing Brussels of drawing Armenia into what the Kremlin describes as an “anti-Russian orbit”.

Yet despite the increasingly pro-European rhetoric emerging from Yerevan, the prospect of Armenia becoming a full EU member remains remote at best.

Even within Brussels there is little serious expectation that Armenia could join the bloc in the foreseeable future. The country is geographically isolated from the EU, locked in unresolved regional tensions, economically dependent on Russia, and still formally embedded within Moscow’s customs and economic structures. Any accession process would likely take many years even under ideal political conditions.

Moreover, the EU itself is struggling with enlargement fatigue. The accession ambitions of Ukraine, Moldova and several Western Balkan states already present Brussels with formidable institutional and financial challenges. Against that backdrop, Armenia is unlikely to move anywhere near the front of the queue.

European officials have carefully avoided offering Armenia any concrete timetable for membership, preferring instead to frame the relationship in terms of “partnership”, democratic reforms, and regulatory alignment. Even supporters of Armenia’s westward turn privately acknowledge that accession is more aspirational than realistic.

For Pashinyan, however, the symbolism matters almost as much as the substance. Closer ties with Europe offer both domestic political capital and a strategic hedge against overreliance on Russia. Opinion polls ahead of the election suggest his Civil Contract party remains comfortably ahead despite economic anxieties and criticism from pro-Russian opponents.

But Armenia’s manoeuvring room remains narrow.

Russia still dominates much of the country’s energy sector and remains a critical trade partner. Any serious disruption to fuel supplies or preferential pricing could hit Armenian households and businesses hard at a time when the economy is already under pressure from regional instability.

The Kremlin appears increasingly determined to force former Soviet allies into making a binary choice between Russia and the West. Armenia, however, has long attempted to balance both sides simultaneously — benefiting from Russian security and energy ties while cautiously expanding relations with Europe and the United States.

That balancing act is becoming harder to sustain.

As the election approaches, Pashinyan is effectively gambling that Armenia can loosen Moscow’s grip without provoking outright economic retaliation. Whether that calculation proves sustainable may determine not only Armenia’s geopolitical future, but also the stability of the wider South Caucasus.

US President Donald Trump announced on Wednesday that he would support Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan in Armenia’s June 7 parliamentary elections, a vote that serves as a litmus test for the government of the South Caucasus nation which has recently shifted its alignment toward the West and distanced itself from Russia.

US President Donald Trump voiced support on Wednesday for Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan in the upcoming elections, which polls show as an exceedingly tight race.

The June 7 parliamentary vote is seen as a litmus test for Pashinyan’s moves to loosen Armenian dependence on Moscow while forging closer ties with the West.

The South Caucasus nation is also still reeling from Azerbaijan’s 2023 military takeover of the Karabakh region and the mass exodus of its 100,000 ethnic Armenians.

Armenia agreed as part of a US-brokered peace deal to establish a transit corridor through its territory that would connect Azerbaijan with its Nakhchivan exclave – dubbed the Trump Route for International Peace and Prosperity (TRIPP).

In a post on Truth Social, Trump said “soon, the United States and Armenia will break ground together” on the TRIPP, “which will transform the South Caucasus, and help our wonderful American Energy Companies gain access from Central Asia all the way to the United States”.

He called Pashinyan “a great friend and Leader” who was “making his Country strong, wealthy, and very secure!”

“Nikol completely shares my vision of PEACE and PROSPERITY for Armenia and the entire South Caucasus region,” Trump wrote.

“For these reasons, Nikol has my COMPLETE and TOTAL Endorsement for Re-Election on June 7, 2026,” Trump said, copying his favored formulation for his frequent domestic political endorsements.

Pashinyan thanked Trump in an X post Thursday for his “high appreciation and friendly words”.

The endorsement comes a day after US Secretary of State Marco Rubio visited Armenia on a return trip from his multi-day tour of India.

Trump, in his post on Wednesday, said that Rubio had “advanced several important Deals for both our Countries”.

(FRANCE 24 with AFP)

https://www.france24.com/en/asia-pacific/20260528-trump-endorses-armenian-prime-minister-nikol-pashinyan-ahead-of-tense-june-poll

For years, an Armenian news outlet called MediaNews has been publishing content from fake social media accounts that either support Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan or target opposition parties.

Many of the accounts were obviously fake because they had very few pictures, except for AI-generated images or random photos of real women taken from online. For example, one fake account that went by the name Sasha Simonyan used a photo of US actor Sasha Alexander. 

Until recently, no one knew who was behind the group, which has almost 100,000 followers on Facebook. A new investigation by fact-checkers at Civilnet, an Armenian news channel and media site, has linked it to one of Pashinyan’s top aides: Taron Chakhoyan. 

While this type of misinformation is not new in Armenia, there has been a “significant escalation” in the lead-up to the parliamentary elections on June 7, according to Artur Papyan, the director of Armenia’s Media Diversity Institute. 

“Everyone is disseminating fake news, everyone is disseminating AI-generated fake videos,” said Ani Grigoryan, the head of the fact-checking team at CivilNet. 

‘Tenfold increase’ 

Journalists were able to connect MediaNews to Chakhoyan because he used his personal contact details, including his phone number, address and email, to register the website before he entered politics. He has denied any involvement. 

Other sources of misinformation have been harder to trace. 

According to Papyan, these campaigns include “anonymous Telegram channels, TikTok humour videos and AI-generated or manipulated visual content designed to bypass traditional verification mechanisms quickly”. 

Since the start of May, there has been a “tenfold increase” in this type of content, which “directly coincided with major diplomatic events”, he said, including the first-ever EU-Armenia summit on May 4-5.  

Experts have identified both domestic and foreign sources of this fake content, including Russia. 

A recent leak from the Social Design Agency, a Russian digital marketing firm, points to a coordinated effort by the Kremlin to create misinformation campaigns in multiple countries – including Armenia in the lead-up to its election. 

One campaign alleged that Pashinyan bought a multimillion-euro luxury mansion in Marseille in southern France. The prime minister made no such purchase, but the story nevertheless spread across social media, and posts about it gained more than 10.6 million views, according to FIP, an Armenian fact-checking platform.  

The misinformation campaigns have taken many forms and go beyond the government, targeting the opposition or vice versa, Grigoryan said. 

Another investigation by her team at Civilnet found that AI-generated vox pop interviews on TikTok have often been created by different opposition parties targeting each other in their bids to gain seats in parliament. 

Fake Pride 

Some of the narratives in these campaigns aim to “weaponise local vulnerabilities, historical traumas and existential identity issues”, Papyan said. 

“The dominant narrative seeks to portray the current Armenian authorities (Pashinyan’s Civil Contract party) as entirely hostile to Armenian history, identity and the Church.” 

One example of this was the creation of a fake organisation called the “Armenian Queer Union”. Emails from this fake group were sent to Armenian local media in early May, claiming that a series of LGBTQ+ focused events were taking place in the country. 

The fake group even claimed that this was being sponsored by Pink Armenia, the country’s largest LGBTQ+ organisation. 

Homophobia is widespread in Armenia, and anti-LGBTQ+ sentiment that circulated during the last election led to a years-long rise in violence against the community that led to the murder of a trans woman, according to Hripsime Kizogyan, Pink Armenia’s executive director. 

“The campaign started to frame the current prime minister and the government as [supporting] so-called LGBT propaganda, so they are endangering our national values,” Kizogyan said. 

It claimed that the current government “is pro-LGBTQ+ … so that means that they are not good for the future of Armenia”. 

AI-generated images of Pashinyan at a fake Pride event in Yerevan were also circulated online.

LGBTQ+ activists in other countries were also contacted individually by an unknown actor asking them to create content about Pride in Yerevan. 

Some of these activists then reached out to Pink Armenia to verify the request. Pink Armenia set the record straight and no videos about the fake event have been published so far. 

While Kizogyan stressed that the current campaign relies on AI-generated content – with awkward Armenian phrases and easy-to-spot fake images – it could have a long-term effect on the community itself.  

“Unfortunately, I think that the risk now is that [the current campaign] would normalise the violence against the LGBTQ+ community, and some people would decide that it’s okay to violate the rights of LGBTQ+ people just based on their hatred – and because they also see that this is something that is not being challenged,” Kizogyan said.  

‘That means war’

While observers of the election are “witnessing misinformation on all sides”, the reach of these campaigns is not evenly matched, according to Philippe Kalfayan, an executive board member of the International Observatory for Democracy in Armenia. 

He noted that the ruling party does have one advantage, in that it “benefits from a kind of protection from the government agreements with groups like Meta – so Facebook, YouTube”. This allows “fabricated” videos supporting the government to remain on platforms longer.

As an example, he pointed to a video that played on fears of war with Azerbaijan.

The video, which is believed to be fabricated, was posted online, and it shows masked men with accents from the Nagorno-Karabakh region threatening Pashinyan. 

According to Kalfayan, it was shared by pro-government media outlets and is still circulating. 

Nagorno-Karabakh is a long-disputed territory between Armenia and Azerbaijan, and was controlled by Armenians before it was lost to Baku’s forces in 2023. 

One common talking point on the campaign trail is that another war might be triggered if the Civil Contract party does not win a majority in the June election. 

In March, Pashinyan told a press conference that if the opposition wins, “it will be a war with the loss of not only territory but also sovereignty of the Republic of Armenia”. 

Kalfayan said that content like the above-mentioned video could have consequences far beyond the election because it shows men from Nagorno-Karabakh “wanting to gain these territories back”.

“In other words, that means war.”

“This is very dangerous because in the end, we are talking about geopolitics, about potential wars,” Kalfayan said.

https://www.france24.com/en/asia-pacific/20260528-fake-pride-masked-men-and-a-surge-in-misinformation-ahead-of-armenia-election

Armenia has held its first military parade since 2016, roughly a week ahead of the parliamentary elections, showcasing weapons acquired since 2022.

The parade in Yerevan to mark Republic Day on Thursday lasted over two hours and featured military equipment purchased from seven countries, including France and India, alongside Armenian-made drones, which authorities said earlier in May the country had begun exporting.

In his address, Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan said Republic Day was ‘being marked in a completely new historical context’, arguing that after ‘nearly 35 years of conflict, peace has been established’ between Armenia and Azerbaijan.

The two countries initialled a peace deal in August 2025 during a summit in Washington, but the treaty has yet to be officially signed.

‘Peace is what the First Republic of Armenia lacked in order to preserve and develop its independence, and the absence of peace became the key reason why the three countries of the South Caucasus, after declaring independence in 1918, successively lost that independence in 1920’, Pashinyan said, adding that lessons had been drawn from history.

‘The established peace, its further institutionalisation, the development and strengthening of the state’s legal foundations, transforming Armenia from a deadlock of conflict into a Crossroads of Peace — including through the implementation of the TRIPP [Trump Route] project — as well as ensuring the security, freedom, and prosperity of its citizens, are our strategic priorities’.

Pashinyan said the parade was intended as a report to Armenian society, presenting what he described as a ‘new Armed Forces […] equipped with new weaponry, new uniforms, and a new doctrine’.

‘The core of this doctrine is the following: the army’s sole mission is to defend the internationally recognised sovereign territory of the Republic of Armenia, and our army should not be used outside Armenia’s internationally recognised territory, except for peacekeeping missions carried out on the basis of international treaties’, Pashinyan said.

He reiterated that such an approach was adopted in October 2022 when Armenia and Azerbaijan recognised each other’s territorial integrity — including recognising Nagorno-Karabakh as part of Azerbaijan — which paved the way for ‘what you will see today’, implying the purchased weapons.

‘Prior to 2022, international markets for weapons and military equipment were largely closed or difficult to access for the Republic of Armenia, as international partners refused to supply Armenia with arms, arguing that they were convinced Armenia would use them outside its internationally recognised territory’, Pashinyan said.

Discussing the domestic arms industry, Pashinyan said it was ‘taking its first but confident steps toward securing a stable position in the international market’. He said that since 2022, the government had invested around ֏170 billion ($460 million) into the defence industry, ‘and today we have results we can be proud of’.

The last full military parade showcasing Armenia’s arsenal was held in 2016 under ex-President Serzh Sargsyan, marking the 25th anniversary of independence. In 2018, after Pashinyan came to power, a smaller-scale parade marking the 100th anniversary of the First Republic of Armenia was held, but it did not include a display of weaponry.

The parade came just over a week ahead of the 7 June parliamentary elections, with some observers seeing it as part of Pashinyan’s electoral campaign.

A new Saakashvili?

Ahead of the parade, on Wednesday, former president Robert Kocharyan, whose Armenia Alliance is currently trailing in third place in the polls, compared Pashinyan to former Georgian President Mikheil Saakashvili, accusing him of attempts to ‘incite things, sharpen the situation, get drawn into geopolitical games’.

He recalled Georgia’s 2007 and 2008 military parades, which showcased Western-supplied equipment.

Kocharyan claimed that during a 2007 meeting in Batumi, Saakashvili praised the army he had built, saying the Russian army was ‘falling apart’.

‘I told him: “Are you out of your mind? You don’t fully understand what kind of story you could end up in”. Exactly two months after that parade, they attacked Tskhinvali [Tskhinval], if I’m not mistaken, 22 Russian peacekeepers were killed, and within three days the Russian army was near Tbilisi’, he said.

‘You cannot build an army through performative  steps’, Kocharyan added.

Separately, the Strong Armenia Alliance of Russian–Armenian tycoon Samvel Karapetyan said the parade was aimed at ‘creating the illusion of security and once again deceiving the public’.

‘Dear citizen, you should know that security is not built through military parades. Security is built through strong and dignified leadership and a strong state — one that has a strong economy, strong diplomacy, a professional army, and political will’, the statement said.

Armenia is pivoting toward the West as frustration grows with longtime ally Russia.