National Interest

by Anna Arutyunyan

    Even a strong anti-Pashinyan vote in Armenia’s parliamentary elections would be unlikely to reverse the prime minister’s foreign policy.

    Today, June 7, Armenians are voting in a parliamentary election that has been described, accurately enough, as a referendum on the country’s geopolitical direction. Six weeks of Western commentary have framed it as a binary: if Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan wins, the country’s Western pivot survives; if he loses, Russian influence returns to Yerevan.

    The framing is too tidy and has led to a policy prescription that Washington must act loudly before the vote to save the Trump administration’s signature win in the South Caucasus. This is wrong on both political and substantive grounds. The pivot has already happened. The election will decide how durable it is, not whether it happened. What Washington does after the election will be much more important than anything it did before.

    The realignment is real and not Pashinyan’s personal project. Since Russia stood aside during the 2020 war that cost Armenia control of Nagorno-Karabakh, Yerevan has dismantled its dependence on Russia with remarkable speed. The Russian share of Armenian arms imports has collapsed from roughly 94 percent a decade ago to under 10 percent today; India and France are now the main suppliers. Russian border guards have left every Armenian frontier post.

    Armenia froze its participation in the Russian-led Collective Security Treaty Organization (CSTO), passed a law committing to pursue European Union membership, and, in August, stood with President Donald Trump and the president of Azerbaijan at the White House to sign a peace framework granting the United States 99-year development rights to a transit corridor across Armenian territory. The roughly 100,000 ethnic Armenians displaced from Nagorno-Karabakh in 2023 are now a domestic constituency no government can ignore and they remember which capital looked away.

    For a relationship that dates to the 1828 Treaty of Turkmenchay, this is a generational break. But it is not a clean one and this is where the dominant Western framing misses the point. Russia has not been expelled from Armenia, but its role has been reduced. It remains Armenia’s largest trading partner by a margin of two to three times over any rival. It supplies roughly 80 percent of Armenia’s natural gas. Russia’s state nuclear corporation operates the Metsamor plant, which provides nearly a third of the country’s electricity and last September, Pashinyan himself thanked Rosatom for extending the plant’s life and exploring new reactors. About 2 million Armenians live and work in Russia. When Pashinyan visited the Kremlin in April, Russian President Vladimir Putin pointedly said that “pro-Russian forces” should be allowed to compete freely in the June 7 election.

    This is why the binary framing fails. A government that continues Pashinyan’s course will accelerate the trajectory: sign a treaty with Azerbaijan, open the border with Turkey, continue EU accession talks and build the corridor to the Azerbaijani enclave in Nakhchivan. If a government relies on Russia-aligned forces, it may not reverse these steps outright but could slow them down: the corridor might not be built, the treaty could remain unsigned, the CSTO freeze might end quietly and Russia could use gas prices as leverage.

    Reversal would look more like slow progress than a sudden shift. However, the structural realities on the ground, arms diversification, the absence of Russian border guards, the presence of Nagorno-Karabakh refugees and commercial stakes tied to the Trump Route for International Peace and Prosperity (TRIPP) would constrain even an opposition government’s ability to reverse the pivot fully. The election will determine how quickly these changes become permanent, not whether they endure.

    The timing is sharpened by what is happening elsewhere. Both the United States and Russia are focused on the war with Iran, which has reopened Moscow’s energy leverage at exactly the moment Armenia’s southern arms-supply route from India, running through Iranian territory, has come under pressure. Armenia is now the only South Caucasus country that borders Iran and is politically aligned with Washington.

    Its importance to the United States is higher than ever, but American attention is more divided than usual. This mix of high stakes and limited focus is exactly when dramatic intervention before an election can backfire. Moscow wants to portray Pashinyan as a Western project rather than an Armenian choice. Visible American pressure before the vote would reinforce that narrative for the Kremlin.

    The right American posture is to be patient now and act clearly after the election. Whichever way Armenians vote, the day after the election, Washington should have a step-by-step plan ready for the day after. It should turn the August 2025 agreement into a funded, dated implementation plan for the corridor, with contractors breaking ground and commercial tenants signed, so the project becomes real rather than a line in a communiqué.

    It should press, through direct engagement between Trump and Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, for reopening the Turkish-Armenian border. This step would do the most to help end Armenia’s geographic isolation, provide a trade route that does not depend on Russia or Iran and reduce Russia’s leverage over gas by allowing alternatives through Turkey. It is also a lever Russia is structurally powerless to block. It costs Washington almost nothing.

    Beyond Turkey, Washington should coordinate with France and India, Armenia’s main arms suppliers. The United States should also establish a reliable backup for Armenia’s energy needs to prevent Russia from using gas prices as a weapon. None of these steps requires rushed spending or dramatic moves before the election. All assume the United States treats Armenia as a valuable partner rather than a headline worth claiming.

    A century ago, in 1920, Armenia lost its independence between Bolshevik Russia and a rising Turkey while the West looked away. The circumstances today are different and far more hopeful. Armenians have already done the hard work: they have begun building a country that is not dependent on Moscow for its security. Today, they are registering that fact at the ballot box, however they choose. The American job is not to save the election. It is to be ready, the morning after, to help make permanent what Armenians have already begun.