Pro-EU ruling party in Armenia claims victory in parliamentary election

 

Pro-EU ruling party in Armenia claims victory in parliamentary election

 

Final results are expected to be declared later on Monday

 

June 7, 2026 9:27 pm CET

By Jonas Loesel

https://www.politico.eu/article/armenia-parliament-election-exit-polls-nikol-pashinyan/

 

Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan said on Monday that his pro-EU Civil Contract party had won a “historic victory” in the country’s parliamentary elections. 

 

Pashinyan claimed at a press conference that Civil Contract had prevailed after early results from just over a fifth of polling stations showed it getting around 54 percent of the vote.

 

Its closest rival, the pro-Russian Armenia Alliance, was in second place at the time with 23.5 percent. Armenia’s Central Election Commission is expected to declare the final results later on Monday.

 

The parliamentary elections, the first since Armenia ceded the disputed region of Nagorno-Karabakh to Azerbaijan in 2023, were a high-stakes referendum between Pashinyan, who was endorsed by U.S. President Donald Trump, and his leading opponent, the Russian-Armenian oligarch Samvel Karapetyan.

 

“The future of Armenia will be a strategy of strengthening independence, statehood, democracy, and the rule of law,” Pashinyan told reporters outside a polling station after casting his ballot Sunday morning. 

 

“We will continue along the path of democratic reforms, of course with the support of our European partners, because the European Union is our main partner in implementing democratic reforms,” he said.

 

The election was buffeted by concerns of Russian meddling. Armenian authorities announced on Saturday that more than 40 people had been arrested on suspicion of buying votes amid an investigation into a large-scale scheme allegedly involving Strong Armenia, according to state media.

 

Six of the arrest warrants were for members of Karapetyan’s party, according to media reports.

 

Commenting on the arrests Sunday, Karapetyan said they “would not change the minds of Armenian voters.” The Strong Armenia founder had been campaigning from his mansion after being put under house arrest last July for making “public calls to usurp power.” He has rejected the charge as politically motivated.

 

Karapetyan was escorted to a polling station on Sunday where he spoke briefly to the media before returning home, the Associated Press reported. “The Armenian people will make the right choice and Armenia will finally have a legitimate government,” Karapetyan said.

 

Reuters reported in May that Russia was considering importing tens of thousands of Russia-based Armenians to vote in this weekend’s election in an effort to undermine the prime minister.

 

Pashinyan, who earned an endorsement from Trump in May, has pivoted toward the West since Russian President Vladimir Putin’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022. Although Armenia remains part of a single market with Russia, domestic support for Moscow nosedived after its military forces did little when Azerbaijan took control of Nagorno-Karabakh in 2023.

 

Pashinyan told POLITICO at the time that “the Russian peacekeepers have failed in their mission,” and has since shifted his stance toward the EU and the U.S. Yerevan suspended its military alliance with Russia in 2024; since then Pashinyan’s government has expressed its willingness to join the EU, drawing the Kremlin’s ire.

 

European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen congratulated Pashinyan on the victory. “The spirit of the Velvet Revolution you led in 2018 is alive and well,” she said in a post on X. “We deeply value our partnership with a democratic Armenia that is drawing ever closer to Europe.”

 

“Armenia can count on us,” the Commission chief said.