On June 7, Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan’s Civil Contract party won the country’s parliamentary elections with just under 50 percent of the vote, enough under Armenia’s electoral system to govern alone with a comfortable majority. The nearest challenger, the Strong Armenia bloc fronted by Russian-Armenian billionaire Samvel Karapetyan, trailed near 23 percent, and every opposition force that cleared the threshold campaigned on some version of repairing ties with Moscow. Civil Contract cast the vote as a choice between a return to Russia’s orbit and a more independent Armenia drawn toward the West, and the electorate sided with the latter. Yet the win alone will not seal Armenia’s fate. The country must still pass the constitutional change widely seen as the final barrier to normalization with Azerbaijan and Turkey, and Pashinyan’s victory does not mean Russia will quietly concede a country it has dominated for two centuries.
Read the full article on the Central Asia Caucasus Institute.
Joseph Epstein is Director of the Turan Research Center.