Armenia heads to polls amid Russian pressure and threat of ‘Ukrainian scenario’

Relationship between Vladimir Putin and traditional ally has slowly unravelled under current PM Nikol Pashinyan

The bottling line at the Abovyan cognac factory in Armenia is running at full tilt.

Women in white coats and hairnets work the conveyor with practised speed – labelling, stacking, loading pallets – racing to fill a truck.

The spirit’s destination is Russia . But it probably won’t make it there.

Last month, Moscow announced a ban on imports from Abovyan, alongside two other leading producers of Armenian cognac – the name under which Armenian brandy is sold in Russia.

The official reason for the move was sanitary concerns, but it was widely viewed as political pressure aimed at discouraging the country’s westward tilt ahead of parliamentary elections on Sunday.

It was the latest in a long line of recent trade restrictions – affecting everything from flowers and fish to fruit and its famed brandy – that the Kremlin has imposed on a nation of 3 million people that sends roughly 40% of its exports to nearby Russia.

“We just hope this all blows over,” said Samvel Goroyan, Abovyan’s director, in his office on the outskirts of the capital, Yerevan. “All our cognac is sold in Russia, 7m bottles a year,” he shrugged. “We have nowhere else to go.”

For most of its post-Soviet existence since 1991, Armenia was Moscow’s closest ally in the South Caucasus, which bridges eastern Europe and west Asia. It hosted Russian troops, bought Russian weapons and integrated with Kremlin-led political and economic structures.

But the relationship has slowly unravelled under the current prime minister, Nikol Pashinyan, whose Civil Contract party came to power on the back of a popular revolution in 2018.

His push to reorient Armenia towards Europe represents its most significant foreign policy shift since independence, and Sunday’s vote will be a test of that policy, which Pashinyan is pursuing despite the reality of his country’s deep economic dependence on Russia.

“Moscow feels it is losing Armenia, that the country has got a bit too big for its boots,” said Thomas de Waal, a senior fellow with global analysts Carnegie Europe. “So Moscow is trying to force Pashinyan to make a choice – for Russia.”

Last month, the Russian president, Vladimir Putin , warned that Armenia could face a “Ukrainian scenario” if it continued its European integration aims. Dmitry Medvedev, the hawkish deputy chair of Russia’s powerful ​security council, has meanwhile hinted that Pashinyan could suffer the ⁠fate of the Bolshevik leader Leon Trotsky, whom Joseph Stalin had killed with an ice pick.

Ties between the two countries first nosedived after Azerbaijan – which neighbours both – seized the disputed Nagorno-Karabakh region in 2023, triggering an exodus of more than 100,000 ethnic Armenians from the enclave.

For many Armenians, Russia’s response was a watershed moment. Despite being in a security alliance with Armenia and maintaining peacekeepers in Nagorno-Karabakh, Moscow stood aside as Azerbaijan seized control – exposing the limits of Russian security guarantees.

The loss prompted officials in Yerevan to openly question the value of the Collective Security Treaty Organisation (CSTO), the Moscow-led military alliance Armenia had long treated as the cornerstone of its security. Last year, Pashinyan suspended Armenia’s participation altogether.

The country drew further ire from Moscow in April, when it hosted a European Political Community summit – with the Ukrainian president, Volodymyr Zelenskyy, in attendance.

In recent months, Pashinyan has not only spoken about Armenia’s aspirations to join the EU – a prospect that remains distant – but also made inroads with Washington.

Donald Trump has publicly endorsed him, while the vice-president, JD Vance, and the secretary of state, Marco Rubio, have both visited Yerevan, underscoring a level of US political attention and economic engagement it has never previously enjoyed.

For Moscow, Armenia’s westward drift comes at a particularly sensitive moment, four years into the grinding war in Ukraine, as it engages in an increasingly complex effort to preserve its influence across the former Soviet sphere and beyond.

Areg Kochinyan, the president of the Yerevan-based Research Center on Security Policy, said: “Russians are concerned about losing, in their understanding, yet another country that they see as their rightful sphere of interest. And they are acting on it.”

In Moldova and Hungary, the Kremlin has previously sought – without success – to bolster friendly political forces in elections using what western intelligence services have described as a combination of disinformation campaigns and covert influence operations.

Analysts and western officials say elements of the same playbook are now being deployed in Armenia. Kremlin backing has flowed toward Pashinyan’s main challenger, Samvel Karapetyan, a Russian-Armenian billionaire whose Stronger Armenia party advocates for closer ties with Moscow. He is currently under house arrest on charges linked to calls for the seizure of power.

But despite Moscow’s pressure, opinion polls suggest Pashinyan’s party is on course to comfortably emerge as the largest political force on about 30% of the vote, while Karapetyan trails at roughly 10%.

“What’s interesting is this Russian campaign has backfired. It’s only strengthened Pashinyan at home,” said Richard Giragosian, the director of the Regional Studies Center, a thinktank based in Yerevan.

De Waal added that the Armenian opposition had largely discredited itself in the public’s perception through its perceived closeness to Russia. “Pashinyan’s Civil Contract party is likely to win the elections more or less by default,” De Waal said. “Not because the prime minister is still popular – he isn’t – but because Armenia’s opposition is even less competent or impressive and too associated with Russia.”

Analysts say Moscow has also been careful not to push too hard, as the Kremlin understands that excessive pressure could backfire and fuel further anti-Russian sentiment.

Hovhannes Nikoghosyan, an Armenian political scientist, said: “No one can confidently predict how far Moscow will continue pressure if Pashinyan is re-elected, but if he remains in power, Russia will still have to find some modus operandi with the existing political landscape. Leaving Armenia to their geopolitical competitors’ embrace is something Kremlin will not want to do.”

Pashinyan, a former journalist, has centred his campaign on what he calls the “crossroads of peace” – a vision of Armenia as a regional transit hub reconnecting long-closed borders with Azerbaijan and its ally Turkey, moving the country beyond decades of conflict and poor connectivity.

He has also made clear that, like many Armenians, he seeks diversification rather than divorce from Russia. Pashinyan has stressed that Moscow will keep its large military base in Armenia, and said he would travel to meet Putin shortly after the elections.

Giragosian said: “Russia has such dominance that the west is not a peer competitor. Pashinyan’s policies are based on a realistic assessment. Nobody is talking about replacing Russia with France, Europe or the United States overnight.”

Still, European leaders have made little secret of their preference for a Pashinyan victory.

The Armenian prime minister has cultivated particularly close ties with the French president, Emmanuel Macron, and the two leaders even performed a musical act together during Macron’s visit to Armenia – with Pashinyan on drums as the French president sang at an official dinner.

That support has come despite growing concerns about Pashinyan’s democratic record. Dozens of opposition activists have been detained in the run-up to the election, including allies of Karapetyan.

Those criticisms have largely fallen on deaf ears in Brussels. On Thursday, eager to support Armenia’s drift away from Moscow, the EU announced an initial €50m economic support package to help the country weather Russian trade pressure, and vowed further economic cooperation.

In a symbolic gesture of solidarity, Ukraine has also begun importing Armenian roses following Russia’s ban on flower imports.

But for all Armenia’s efforts to diversify its partnerships, Moscow still holds powerful economic and political levers. Russian officials have hinted in recent weeks that Armenia may no longer be able to rely on the subsidised gas that underpins much of its economy.

“When Russia demands to renegotiate the price of subsidised gas, that tells you Armenia has gone too far, too fast,” said Giragosian. “Then there will be a real crisis.”