YEREVAN. The ballots are being counted, but the real vote here was cast long ago. In Moscow.
The question: does Armenia dare to break free from the Kremlin’s orbit or will it be pulled back, kicking and screaming, into the Russian bear hug? This is a knife-edge election. The pro-West government of Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan, the man who rode the 2018 velvet revolution to power, is fighting for its life.
And the opposition, backed by familiar forces, smells blood. Sources inside the Pashinyan camp tell me they are bracing for a contested result. They fear the Kremlin has already decided their fate.
Leaked recordings this week, purportedly of Armenian security officials discussing meddling, have only fuelled those fears. But here is the catch. The opposition is fractured.
They want to oust Pashinyan, but they cannot agree on a successor. One faction is openly pro-Russian, talking up the benefits of the Collective Security Treaty Organization. The other is a motley crew of nationalists and old guard oligarchs.
No one trusts them. Pashinyan’s gamble is plain. He is betting that voters will overlook the humiliation of last year’s Nagorno-Karabakh defeat and instead reward him for charting a Western course.
It is a huge ask. The war was a disaster. 6,000 dead.
Swathes of land lost to Azerbaijan. Russian peacekeepers looked the other way. Yet polling shows Pashinyan running neck-and-neck with his main rival, former president Robert Kocharyan.
The numbers are volatile. Turnout will be critical. In the diaspora, which funds both sides, there is concern.
The polls closed an hour ago, and the early signs are not good for the government. Reports of irregularities in the regions, particularly in areas close to the border. I am watching the count live from the CEC.
The atmosphere is tense. The army is on standby. Everyone here remembers Kyiv in 2014.
The question now is whether the West has the stomach for a fight. EU election observers are present, but their role is limited. The US has been conspicuously quiet.
A senior administration official told me this morning that Washington is “monitoring the situation closely” – code for “we are not getting involved”. Meanwhile, Moscow has been anything but quiet. Putin’s spokesman, Dmitry Peskov, this afternoon issued a barely veiled warning: “We hope that the Armenian people will make the right choice.
” Translation: choose our man or else. The pressure is immense. Gas tariffs, military aid, and the frozen conflict with Azerbaijan are all levers the Kremlin can pull.
But Pashinyan knows that if he wins, he has a mandate to push through a package of reforms, including a long-delayed EU association agreement. That would be a direct challenge to the Eurasian Economic Union. It could trigger a full-scale diplomatic crisis.
The next few hours will be telling. If the result is close, there will be legal challenges, street protests, and quite possibly violence. The security services suspect provocations.
I am told that Russian-aligned groups have been stockpiling arms. The government is downplaying the risk, but off the record, ministers are terrified. This is not just an election.
It is a referendum on whether Armenia remains a sovereign nation. The world is about to find out if the velvet revolution has a second act, or if the old guard reclaims its prize.
