Pashinian repeatedly said until this month that his government made a strategic decision to replace Armenia’s aging nuclear plant at Metsamor with a facility equipped with small modular reactors (SMRs), a new and relatively untested technology offered by the United States. He and U.S. Vice President JD Vance finalized a U.S.-Armenian agreement on nuclear energy cooperation when they met in Yerevan in February.

“American technology is going to be coming to this country,” Vance announced after the talks.

Two days after meeting with the head of the head of Russia’s Rosatom nuclear corporation, Alexei Likhachev, Pashinian indicated on October 1 that he is no longer interested in SMRs and thinks Armenia needs a much more powerful reactor proposed by the Russians. He told Likhachev that Yerevan will decide “soon” which foreign country or company should implement its ambitious nuclear project.

The Rosatom chief spoke last week of a “signal that our proposal to construct a gigawatt-class VVER-1000 [power-generating] unit within the shortest possible timeframe has been received extremely positively” in Yerevan.

The issue was high on the agenda of U.S. Deputy Assistant Secretary of State Shawna Wilson’s talks with Armenia’s Deputy Minister of Infrastructures and Territorial Administration Narek Apitonian.

According to an official Armenian readout of the talks, Apitonian pointed to the appointment earlier this week of a new acting director of an Armenian state company tasked with building the new nuclear facility. He was reported to express hope that “this appointment will give new impetus to the process of constructing a new nuclear power unit, including the work being carried out with relevant U.S. companies.”

It was not clear whether those companies might still be contracted by the Armenian government for the plant’s construction. The U.S. Embassy in Yerevan did not immediately issue a statement on Wilson’s meeting with Apitonian.

Pashinian’s apparent change of heart on the issue was construed by local observers as an attempt to placate Moscow ahead of his planned crunch talks with Russian President Vladimir Putin on the future of Russian-Armenian relations. The Armenian premier again hardened his tone against the Kremlin on Thursday following the release of a Eurasian Economic Union report recommending Armenia’s suspension from the Russian-led trade bloc. Such a development would almost certainly lead to more Russian economic sanctions against Yerevan.

They also said they are undaunted by Pashinian’s implicit threats to force snap parliamentary elections in the likely event of his failure to push the draft constitution through the National Assembly.

The still unpublicized draft has to be approved by at least two-thirds of the parliament’s deputies before it can be put on a referendum. The ruling Civil Contract party fell short of such a majority in disputed parliamentary elections held on June 7. Pashinian said on Thursday that he may call another election soon if he fails to “convince our opposition colleagues.”

“We are ready [for a fresh election,]” Narek Karapetian, the parliamentary leader of the Strong Armenia alliance wrote the next morning. “Just tell us the date. People must raise their voices against your endless concessions.”

“[Azerbaijani President Ilham] Aliyev must not decide whether our country’s constitution must be changed or not,” he told journalists later in the day.

Karapetian insisted that the opposition alliance led by his billionaire uncle Samvel will not change its stance even if the authorities arrest more of its members and supporters in the coming weeks or months.

Anna Grigorian, who leads the parliamentary group of former President Robert Kocharian’s Hayastan alliance, accused Pashinian of “blackmailing” the opposition.

“I want to make clear that Hayastan will not succumb to that blackmail,” Grigorian told RFE/RL’s Armenian Service. “Does he [Pashinian] think we could vote for Aliyev’s constitution for the sake of retaining our parliament seats? Never.”

Azerbaijan says a change of the current Armenia constitution is a necessary condition for its signing of an Armenian-Azerbaijani peace treaty initialed in Washington last year. While rejecting this precondition, Pashinian has pledged to try to enact such a change.

A senior member of Pashinian’s Civil Contract party, deputy parliament speaker Vahagn Aleksanian, declined to comment on the likelihood of the snap election. He said it could be discussed only after the parliament votes on the draft constitution which is expected to be presented to it later this year.

Tigran Abrahamian, a lawmaker representing Strong Armenia, said Karapetian’s bloc looks forward to such fresh polls because it believes Civil Contract would lose them. Grigorian was more cautious in that regard.

“We must honestly admit that the opposition was weakened in the post-election period given its failure to achieve its main goal and the arrests of opposition leaders,” she said. “But this doesn’t mean the opposition should sit idly by. We must be prepared for all scenarios.”

Kocharian was arrested on August 25 the day after his younger son Levon bitterly argued with Prime Minister Nikol Pashinian on the Armenian parliament floor. His elder son Sedrak and the chief executives of four companies partly or fully owned by the latter were also taken into custody.

Armenia’s Anti-Corruption Committee (ACC) claims that Kocharian had abused his powers to let Sedrak acquire state-owned land for those businesses at cutdown prices during his 1998-2008 rule. It also accuses him of money laundering and bribery. Sedrak Kocharian is accused of assisting in the alleged crimes strongly denied by him and his father.

The court backed ACC claims that they could obstruct the continuing investigation if set free now. Kocharian’s lawyers continued to say that the investigators have failed to substantiate their accusations.

“If they have even a slight regard for the law, they should dismiss this case regardless of any political pressure,” one of them, Aram Orbelian, told journalists.

Orbelian insisted that the 72-year-old ex-president is not responsible for the land privatizations because they were formally approved by Armenia’s government which he technically did not head. As part of the same criminal case, the ACC is posthumously prosecuting Andranik Markarian, who served as prime minister from 2000 until his death in 2007.

The defense lawyers also said the land in question was privatized in the 2000s at the market-based prices of that time, which were well below the current ones.

Hayastan was one of the three main opposition groups that challenged Pashinian in the June 7 parliamentary elections and accused him of rigging their results. Before and after the elections, Pashinian repeatedly pledged to jail and “dispossess” their leaders. He accused Kocharian of corruption, pointing to the ex-president’s and his sons’ business interests.

Kocharian had already been incarcerated for three times since the 2018 “velvet revolution” that brought Pashinian to power. He faced accusations stemming from a 2008 post-election unrest in Yerevan. He and three other former officials are still standing trial on those charges denied by them.