By Mathieu Lemoine

Armenia’s June 2026 parliamentary elections were not only a contest over government formation. It was a test of whether democratic politics can provide legitimacy for a painful post-Karabakh recalibration. Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan’s Civil Contract party won 49.81 percent of the vote, enough to continue governing, but not the two-thirds majority required to initiate constitutional change on its own. The result strengthens Pashinyan’s mandate to pursue peace with Azerbaijan and diversify Armenia’s foreign policy, but it does not remove the structural pressures shaping the South Caucasus.

BACKGROUND:

The election was Armenia’s first parliamentary vote since Azerbaijan’s 2023 takeover of Nagorno-Karabakh and the displacement of its Armenian population. It followed years of declining confidence in Russia’s security guarantees, growing Armenian engagement with the EU and the U.S., and a difficult peace process with Azerbaijan. The campaign therefore unfolded at the intersection of domestic legitimacy, post-war trauma and regional realignment.

Civil Contract’s victory confirmed that Armenian voters were not prepared to return the pre-2018 political elite to power. It also showed that Russia-oriented opposition forces, despite mobilizing dissatisfaction over Karabakh and Pashinyan’s concessions, could not convert that discontent into a governing majority. Strong Armenia received 23.29 percent of the vote, while the Armenia Alliance also remained well behind the ruling party, leaving Civil Contract with a clear lead and the ability to form a government. At the same time, the vote should not be read as a simple plebiscite on “the West.” Pashinyan campaigned on peace, sovereignty and a more balanced foreign policy, not on a clean rupture with Russia.

From an electoral perspective, the process mattered because Armenia’s foreign policy shift depends on the government’s ability to claim democratic legitimacy. International observers assessed the vote as competitive and generally well administered, while also noting a confrontational campaign environment and external pressure. Reuters also reported concerns over selective justice linked to prosecutions and arrests of opposition figures before the vote. This combination is important. The election produced a usable mandate, but not an uncontested political consensus.

IMPLICATIONS:

The first implication is that an electoral mandate is not a peace settlement. Pashinyan can now argue that voters endorsed continuity: negotiations with Azerbaijan, normalization with Türkiye and strategic diversification away from overdependence on Russia. Yet the most difficult questions remain outside the immediate reach of an ordinary parliamentary majority. Azerbaijan has demanded that Armenia amend its constitution to remove what Baku regards as an implicit reference to Nagorno-Karabakh. Pashinyan’s party did not secure the parliamentary strength needed to call a constitutional referendum on its own. This creates a gap between electoral legitimacy and constitutional capacity.

That gap will shape the next phase of negotiations. The Armenian government can continue talks, but it cannot easily present constitutional change as a purely technical step. For many Armenians, Karabakh is not only a legal issue but a national trauma. Any move perceived as closing the historical and political question of Karabakh will be vulnerable to opposition mobilization. In this sense, the election authorized a direction, but not every concession that may be required to complete it.

The second implication concerns Azerbaijan’s leverage. The vote strengthened the Armenian government domestically, but it did not alter the asymmetry created by Azerbaijan’s military advantage since 2020 and 2023. Border incidents and reports of renewed ceasefire violations, particularly around sensitive areas such as Syunik, show that negotiations continue under pressure rather than in a neutral environment. This matters because the unresolved implementation of transit arrangements, including the Trump Route for International Peace and Prosperity, leaves room for competing interpretations over sovereignty, customs, security and access between Azerbaijan proper and Nakhchivan.

Armenia can endorse connectivity as part of a peace agenda. Indeed, Pashinyan’s “Crossroads of Peace” logic depends on turning Armenia from a blockaded state into a regional connector. But if transit arrangements remain ambiguous or delayed, connectivity can also become a source of coercion. Syunik is not only a transport question. It is Armenia’s southern link to Iran, a sensitive zone in Azerbaijani-Turkish strategy, and a red line for Tehran. This is why the regional significance of Armenia’s election lies less in the result itself than in whether the government can convert its mandate into enforceable arrangements that preserve Armenian sovereignty while enabling regional trade.

The third implication is that Russia’s role is weakened but not eliminated. Moscow’s credibility as Armenia’s security patron has been severely damaged since 2020 and 2023, a reassessment reflected in Pashinyan’s own statement that Armenia’s reliance on Russia for security had been a “strategic mistake.” During the election campaign, Russian pressure appeared not only as geopolitical rhetoric but as a factor in the electoral environment: observers cited public threats and trade pressure, while media reporting also pointed to information operations aimed at influencing the vote. That is precisely why the Armenian case is instructive for the wider post-Soviet space: external influence no longer operates only through formal alliances, military bases or economic dependence. It also works through the campaign environment, information space, diaspora networks and the use of economic vulnerability.

The election showed that Russian pressure can be politically counterproductive. It did not prevent Pashinyan’s victory and may have reinforced his claim to be defending Armenian sovereignty. But Russia retains tools that can complicate Armenia’s post-election trajectory. Armenia remains economically exposed to Russia through trade, energy, labor migration and remittances. It also remains formally entangled in Russian-led institutions, even as the political basis for that alignment erodes. The region is therefore not simply becoming “post-Russian.” It is becoming less ordered, less predictable and more coercive.

The fourth implication concerns the West. The EU, the U.S. and several European states have more room to support Armenia after the election. Western political backing can strengthen Armenia’s institutional resilience, reduce isolation and support negotiations. But political support is not the same as hard security guarantees. Armenia’s strategic problem is not that it has chosen one patron over another. It is that the old patron has lost legitimacy, while no new actor is prepared to replace it as a security guarantor.

This creates a difficult policy environment for Yerevan. Armenia must deepen cooperation with Western partners without provoking expectations that cannot be met. It must maintain relations with Iran without undermining its Western outreach. It must manage Russia without returning to dependency. And it must negotiate with Azerbaijan from a weaker position while persuading Armenian society that peace is not capitulation. Elections can legitimize this course, but they cannot substitute for a security architecture.

For the South Caucasus, the broader lesson is that the regional order is moving beyond Russian-centered conflict management without yet acquiring a stable replacement. Azerbaijan is more powerful. Türkiye is more central. Iran is defensive about corridor politics and border changes. Russia is weakened but still disruptive. Western actors are more present but cautious. In this environment, Armenia’s election is regionally significant because it tested whether democratic legitimacy can support a small state’s strategic adaptation under pressure.

CONCLUSIONS:

Armenia’s election should not be interpreted only as a geopolitical choice between Russia and the West. It is better understood as a case of democratic mandate under strategic constraint. Pashinyan now has renewed legitimacy to pursue peace, normalization and diversification. Yet this legitimacy does not by itself resolve the constitutional question, Azerbaijan’s leverage, Russian coercive tools, uncertainty over transit arrangements, or the lack of enforceable Western security guarantees.

The vote therefore clarifies Armenia’s direction but not its destination. It gives the government political authority to continue, but the durability of that authority will depend on whether peace and connectivity produce tangible security rather than new vulnerabilities. If Armenia can translate electoral legitimacy into a credible settlement, stronger institutions and diversified partnerships, the 2026 election may become a turning point in the South Caucasus. If not, it may be remembered as a mandate that clarified the country’s intentions without resolving the regional pressures surrounding them.

The central lesson extends beyond Armenia. In a fragmented South Caucasus, elections can authorize strategic change, but they cannot replace security architecture. Democratic legitimacy is a necessary resource for Armenia’s post-Karabakh recalibration. It is not, on its own, a guarantee that the region will become more stable.

AUTHOR’S BIO: 

Mathieu Lemoine is a governance, rule of law and public sector reform professional with experience across UNDP, USAID, OSCE, EU institutions and election observation missions. He has worked extensively on governance, elections, civil society and regional dynamics in Central Asia, Eastern Europe and the South Caucasus.

By Nargiza Umarova

In early June, Istanbul hosted a number of significant events reflecting Central Asia’s growing role in the east-west land transit system. Representatives of the railway administrations of Uzbekistan, Turkmenistan, Türkiye, Georgia, Azerbaijan and Kyrgyzstan signed an agreement to further develop the CASCA+ corridor (Central Asia–South Caucasus–Anatolia+). The aim is to increase the flow of goods, including transit traffic to the EU. This development aligns with the Middle Corridor extension strategy, the prospects of which was discussed at the 8th meeting of the United Nations Economic Commission for Europe – Economic Cooperation Organization (UNECE-ECO) Coordination Committee. Participants at the Istanbul meeting also reviewed the formation dynamics of the Southern Railway Corridor through Central Asia, Iran and Türkiye. Although the five Central Asian republics are actively involved in international transport initiatives, they have not yet succeeded in consolidating projects of regional interest and mutual benefit, creating the potential for unhealthy competition.

BACKGROUND:

The war in Ukraine, which has become the main geopolitical upheaval in Eurasia, and subsequent regional crises have impacted the security of global maritime shipping, are making land logistics increasingly important in intercontinental transport. This presents an opportunity for Central Asian states to establish a new trade route architecture, turning their geographical position into a strategic asset. However, to achieve this, it is first necessary to address issues of intra-regional connectivity, as this could strengthen Central Asia’s position in its relations with major powers.

Following the launch of a mechanism for regular consultative meetings in 2018, Central Asian countries prioritized the convergence of their national transport systems. This would strengthen the region’s connectivity, facilitate its integration into global supply chains, and accelerate economic growth.

This approach is based on data from authoritative international organizations, including the World Bank, which publishes the Logistics Performance Index (LPI) every two years, reflecting the current state of transport and communications at national and regional levels. 

The geographical remoteness of Central Asia from the open seas puts the region at a disadvantage in terms of achieving logistical efficiency. Landlocked countries must transit through coastal nations and cross multiple borders, which significantly increases the time required to transport goods. An additional day of transit leads to a seven percent reduction in exports. This illustrates the substantial effect that delivery times have on the volume and value of foreign trade. Due to high transport costs combined with the lack of direct access to the sea, the Central Asian region loses up to 2 percent of its GDP annually.

In the context of Central Asian connectivity, geography undoubtedly constrains foreign trade growth. However, this factor is generally manageable. Global experience shows that direct access to maritime trade does not guarantee a country a competitive advantage in logistics connectivity. Even within the same region, coastal economies have access to different numbers of markets with which they can trade without relying on intermediary countries. Morocco, for example, has the highest connectivity of all the North African countries, whereas Malaysia and Sri Lanka have achieved similar positions in Southeast and South Asia. All three of these developing economies are recognized regional transport and logistics hubs in their respective regions, and this has helped them raise their logistics efficiency to the required level. Since 2017, the Central Asian republics have been striving for a similar outcome, working to consolidate extended transport links between countries, with a particular focus on increasing the region’s transit potential. Proximity to open seas is in this case less important than an intraregional strategy enabling Central Asian countries to manage their geographic location and improve transport logistics.

IMPLICATIONS:

From the outset, the five Central Asian states agreed to integrate into the global transport network as a single entity, rather than individually. This would pave the way for the region’s strategic autonomy, which, through implementing a coordinated policy to develop and promote promising transit corridors crossing Central Asia, could align relations with major powers, prioritizing pan-regional interests and thereby enhancing the region’s geopolitical significance. The primary task of this approach is to strengthen intra-regional connectivity, which requires collective action to remove administrative, legal and technical barriers. To this end, the establishment of a Regional Center for Transport and Communications Connectivity under the auspices of the UN has been proposed.

Although this initiative has yet to be implemented, certain positive developments in Central Asia’s transport connectivity have already been achieved. These include the restoration and modernization of key transport routes between countries in the region, the opening of new trade routes and an increase in transit freight traffic. However, urgent solutions are needed to address issues such as unifying tariff policies, harmonizing transport legislation, introducing standardized permit forms and electronic document management practices, reducing customs duties, increasing the throughput capacity of border crossings and simplifying customs procedures. Attracting investment in transport infrastructure and digitalizing the transportation process is also crucial. While there is a general understanding of the urgency of these issues, there is no consolidated effort to address them. 

There is a growing trend towards developing new interregional transit corridors rather than local transport routes. A focus on self-interest and a lack of proper coordination in the implementation of such projects risks fueling rivalry between regional states. This could potentially deprive them of the opportunity to influence the geopolitics of transport corridors in Central Asia.

Globally rising geopolitical tensions are creating growing uncertainty in the maritime shipping industry, which is making Central Asian trade routes increasingly important. This, in turn, is stimulating investment interest in the regional transport services market. The main investors are China and the EU, who are implementing their own global initiatives: the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) and the Global Gateway. Japan, South Korea and the Gulf states are also contributing to the development of Central Asia’s transport sector to varying degrees.

CONCLUSIONS:

With limited mutual coordination, the involvement of Central Asian states in infrastructure projects funded by external actors creates an incentive for unhealthy competition. Paradoxically, despite having overlapping interests in transport logistics and the potential to establish mutually beneficial cooperation based on shared priorities, the countries in the region act in isolation, often resorting to foreign aid or support. This is evident in the development of westward transport, for example.

Kazakhstan participates in the Trans-Caspian International Transport Route (TITR), connecting China and Europe and institutionalized by Kazakhstan, Azerbaijan and Georgia in 2014. In 2019, meanwhile, Uzbekistan launched the alternative CASCA+ corridor to Europe via the Caspian Sea in partnership with Kyrgyzstan, Turkmenistan, Azerbaijan, Georgia and Türkiye. 

A similar situation is unfolding along the southern transit route. Uzbekistan is speeding up construction of the Trans-Afghan Railway (the Kabul Corridor), which runs from Termez to Naibabad, Maidanshahr, Logar and Kharlachi. The railway will provide access to Pakistani ports on the Indian Ocean. Meanwhile, Turkmenistan and Kazakhstan are working to create another railway corridor through Afghanistan's western provinces. These initiatives have attracted the attention of influential countries such as Russia, China, Iran and Türkiye, who view them in the context of their own geopolitical interests. This could influence the implementation of each route and fuel regional competition.

In order to avoid the duplication of infrastructure projects, the Central Asian republics should adopt a regional strategy for developing transport corridors and establish a single coordinating body with legal entity status. This would be an important step towards strengthening regional connectivity.

AUTHOR’S BIO: 

Nargiza Umarova is a Head of the Center for Strategic Connectivity at the Institute for Advanced International Studies (IAIS), University of World Economy and Diplomacy (UWED), and an analyst at the Non-governmental Research Institution ‘Knowledge Caravan’, Tashkent, Uzbekistan. Her research activities focus on developments in Central Asia, trends in regional integration, and the influence of great powers on this process. She also explores Uzbekistan’s current policy on the creation and development of international transport corridors. She can be contacted at This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. .

By Eldaniz Gusseinov and Daniel Longerich

On June 14, 2026, the U.S. and Iran announced a framework deal meant to end the war that began on February 28 and to lift the U.S. naval blockade of Iranian ports. The ceasefire reopens the Strait of Hormuz, yet the acute phase has already redrawn the logistical map around Iran. The war exposed Tehran’s dependence on a single maritime chokepoint and pushed it to seek overland routes to the east. This reorientation bears directly on Central Asia and the South Caucasus, through which both Iran's plans and those of its rivals now pass.

BACKGROUND:

The war has accelerated a reshaping of overland corridors around Iran. Tehran is strengthening its rear in Afghanistan, where it has already become the top trading partner and is extending a railway northward from Herat. Iran's rivals are moving in the opposite direction. The U.S. is establishing itself in the South Caucasus through the TRIPP project, while Turkey and the Arab monarchies are building routes that skirt Hormuz. For Central Asia and the South Caucasus, this raises the region’s transit weight and at the same time turns it into an arena of rivalry. The Afghan route gives Iran only partial insurance, since a through connection to China is not yet built and depends on Beijing's willingness to open the border.

For decades, Afghanistan was seen as Pakistan’s strategic depth against India. After the Taliban came to power in 2021, that logic broke down. Pakistan accuses Kabul of sheltering the Tehrik-e Taliban Pakistan (TTP), and cross-border attacks have grown more frequent. Clashes in October 2025 and again in February and March 2026 closed the Torkham and Chaman crossings as reliable commercial routes. For Afghans, the cost has been high. The chamber of commerce estimated losses at about 2.5 million dollars for each day the border stayed shut, and in 2025 some 2.9 million people returned to the country from Iran and Pakistan, adding pressure on markets and food supplies.

Against this backdrop, Kabul turned toward Iran. Tehran overtook Pakistan as Afghanistan’s largest trading partner, with a turnover of around 3.5 billion dollars, almost entirely Iranian exports of fuel and food. Afghan cargo shifted to Iran’s port of Chabahar as a substitute for Pakistan’s Karachi, and the Taliban cabinet invested about US$ 35 million in the port.

After the closure of Hormuz and the U.S. blockade, the ports of Chabahar and Bandar Abbas were cut off, and World Food Programme supplies ran out by mid-April. Squeezed from both sides, Afghanistan shifted toward Central Asia, increasing trade with its northern neighbors from Turkmenistan to Tajikistan. The fate of Afghan trade thus became tied directly to the transit role of the region’s neighbors.

IMPLICATIONS:

Iran’s answer to its maritime vulnerability lies in overland infrastructure. The Khaf-Herat railway, opened in 2020, connected the Iranian network to Herat. The Afghan leg of this line is itself run by a Mashhad-registered consortium controlled by Iranian entities, including the state-owned Islamic Republic of Iran Railways. In October 2025 the parties agreed to build the Herat-Mazar-i-Sharif line, with a technical and economic feasibility study due by March 2026.

The project itself has not moved beyond surveying and financing, and construction has not yet begun. In June 2026 Afghanistan’s central bank announced that commercial banks would finance the line, which would run about 657 kilometers and cost some 55 billion afghani, or roughly US$ 780 million, while survey and design work proceeds with Uzbek involvement. In May 2026 Kabul reopened, after a US$ 6.3 million reconstruction, the fifth section of the Hairatan-Mazar-i-Sharif line, the existing outlet to the Uzbek network, and on June 15 Afghan and Iranian officials discussed speeding up work on the Herat-Mazar-i-Sharif line. Completion is tentatively set for around 2028. The line is meant to extend Iran’s outlet into northern Afghanistan and onward toward Central Asia and China, bypassing the maritime chokepoints.

The route’s ultimate aim, an outlet to China, depends above all on Beijing’s stance. The Afghan side has advanced toward completing a road through the Wakhan Corridor to the Chinese border. China, however, remains cautious about opening the single crossing at the junction with Xinjiang. According to analysts, Beijing’s reluctance stems from concerns over the infiltration of East Turkestan Islamic Movement (ETIM) Uyghur militants from Afghan territory, and it has pressed for closer counterterrorism cooperation. In March 2026 China established Cenling County along the border with the Wakhan, signaling interest, though there is still no customs post there. For the Taliban, the prospect of Iran-China transit through Afghanistan serves as leverage in talks with Beijing, yet the corridor will stay closed until China itself opens the border.

At the same time, Iran’s neighbors are building corridors that go around its territory, and the center of gravity is shifting to the South Caucasus and the Gulf. To the north, the U.S. is promoting the TRIPP project through Armenia’s Syunik, linking Azerbaijan with Nakhichevan and onward to Turkey and Europe, and under a January 2026 agreement the U.S. side holds 74 percent of the management company for an initial 49 years. Tehran is firmly opposed and sees in it the severing of its link to the Black Sea and Europe and a U.S. presence on its border. In Syunik, the Meghri station has stood silent for more than thirty years, and local residents live in uncertainty after a series of conflicts. To the south, Baghdad is accelerating Iraq’s Development Road from the port of Faw toward Turkey, while the India-Middle East-Europe corridor is being laid across Arabia around Iran. The Gulf is meanwhile expanding pipelines toward the Red Sea and the Gulf of Oman to move oil past the strait.

For Central Asia and the South Caucasus, the combined effect cuts both ways. The region’s transit weight is rising, since both Iran and its rivals need overland routes through it. At the same time, the region risks becoming a field of rivalry between U.S.-backed routes and alignments involving Iran and Russia. Central Asian capitals are responding with diversification, developing the Middle Corridor and the China-Kyrgyzstan-Uzbekistan project. The weak link remains Afghanistan’s stability, without which any Iranian outlet to the east is vulnerable.

CONCLUSIONS:

Iran’s turn to the east began before the war, and the events of 2026 sharply accelerated it. Afghanistan is becoming Tehran’s overland insurance against maritime pressure, and the railway to Herat, together with the plan for Mazar-i-Sharif, anchors that link. A through bypass of the maritime chokepoints, however, has yet to be built. Its fate depends on Afghanistan’s stability and on China’s decision about its own border, and the durability of the June ceasefire adds further uncertainty. For Central Asia and the South Caucasus, the main outcome is that the region’s connectivity has become an object of strategic bargaining. U.S.-backed routes to the north and in the Gulf pull the region one way, while Iran’s outlet to the east pulls it another. The region’s states gain from rising transit weight, but their resilience will depend on their ability to keep several directions open at once and avoid attaching themselves to a single center of power.

AUTHOR’S BIO: 

Eldaniz Gusseinov is Co-Founder and Head of Research at Nightingale Int., a geopolitical risk and foresight advisory focused on Central Asia and Greater Eurasia. Contact: This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.

Daniel Longerich is a Partner at Nightingale Int., where he supports the organization in expanding the use of applied data and AI analysis methods. Contact: This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.

By Joseph Epstein

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.

BACKGROUND:

Armenia under Pashinyan has moved steadily away from Russia, above all since the 2020 defeat to Azerbaijan in the Second Karabakh War, a forty-four-day conflict that cost Yerevan roughly three-quarters of the territory Armenian forces had held since the early 1990s. The remainder of Karabakh fell in September 2023, when Azerbaijan retook the enclave and more than one hundred thousand ethnic Armenians fled. Out of that collapse Pashinyan built the vision he calls “Real Armenia” versus “Historic Armenia”: the argument that unless the country relinquishes irredentist claims on its neighbors, it will never enjoy genuine independence.

Pashinyan is often cast as the ideological successor to Armenia’s first president, Levon Ter-Petrosyan, who late in his tenure pushed for a settlement with Azerbaijan to end Armenia’s isolation and strip Russia of its ability to leverage the conflict. He warned, almost prophetically, that Armenia would one day be forced to ask for what it was then rejecting and would not receive it, “as it has happened more than once in our history.” That push cost him his office and triggered the rise of the Karabakh-born politicians who ruled until the Velvet Revolution brought Pashinyan to power in 2018. Ter-Petrosyan was right too early, and Armenia paid for it in 2020.

Pashinyan, who early in his premiership pushed for unification with Karabakh, reversed course entirely after the war, concluding that the only way forward was a deal with the stronger party. That trajectory produced the breakthrough of August 8, 2025, when Trump hosted Pashinyan and Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev at the White House, where the two leaders initialed a peace agreement and committed to a U.S.-brokered connectivity project across southern Armenia.

One obstacle remains, and it is constitutional. Armenia’s constitution, through a preamble invoking the 1990 Declaration of Independence and, with it, the 1989 act of “reunification” with Karabakh, still carries an implicit claim to territory that the entire international community—Armenia included—recognizes as Azerbaijani, and over which Baku reestablished full control in 2023. Removing that language is less an Azerbaijani demand than a load-bearing element of the peace process itself: so long as a founding document lays claim to a neighbor’s recognized land, the conflict cannot be considered definitively closed.

IMPLICATIONS:

The step is not the aberration its critics suggest. Other democracies have rewritten founding texts to settle territorial disputes: Ireland surrendered its constitutional claim to Northern Ireland by referendum in 1998 under the Good Friday Agreement, and a reunifying Germany renounced its claims east of the Oder-Neisse line to normalize relations with Poland. What makes Armenia’s case hard is procedure and politics, not principle. Its Constitutional Court has ruled the preamble immutable, so the only path is an entirely new constitution, ratified by national referendum. Civil Contract has the votes, and a draft shorn of the preamble was finalized in March 2026. The referendum, expected around 2027, is the real test, and Pashinyan’s task is to sell it at home as the completion of the peace rather than a capitulation to it. Clear that hurdle, and Armenia gains overland access to Europe and Central Asia.

Moscow, however, will not concede, and recent reporting shows how much it was willing to spend even as its war in Ukraine strained its resources. OCCRP traced an influence operation, through leaked documents, to Russia’s Social Design Agency—already sanctioned in Washington, London, and Brussels—working under the direction of the Presidential Administration. The agency ran a dedicated outlet aimed at Armenian dual citizens living in Russia, a bloc its own planning documents called potentially decisive, blending fabricated scandals with AI-generated content. The Insider identified the officials managing the Armenia portfolio and the officers dispatched to Yerevan, alongside a plan to bus Russian Armenians in to swing the result.

The influence campaign ran in parallel with economic coercion. At an April Kremlin meeting, Putin told Pashinyan that Armenia could not belong to both the EU and the Russia-led Eurasian Economic Union, citing discounted gas as leverage. Moscow then restricted imports of Armenian produce, flowers, mineral water, and alcohol on pretextual grounds and threatened to scrap the 2013 agreement guaranteeing duty-free gas, oil, and diamonds. At the Union’s summit in Astana in late May, Putin invoked the “Ukrainian scenario” and demanded that Yerevan choose. Armenia’s own history supplies a darker warning: in October 1999, gunmen stormed the National Assembly and killed Prime Minister Vazgen Sargsyan and Speaker Karen Demirchyan, whose reformist coalition had just sidelined then-President Kocharyan, who consolidated power in the aftermath—a reminder that an inconvenient reform government can be removed by means other than the ballot box. Russia retains real leverage over Armenia’s economy and a meaningful share of its population, and it has now demonstrated its capacity to run sophisticated active measures inside the country.

Against that pressure, U.S. engagement has been unprecedented. In February, JD Vance became the first sitting U.S. vice president to visit Armenia, advancing a civil nuclear deal and offering Yerevan a place in a U.S.-led critical minerals bloc. In late May, Secretary of State Marco Rubio signed a strategic partnership charter and the corridor framework in Yerevan, and days later Trump issued his “complete and total endorsement” of Pashinyan—the first time a U.S. president has openly backed a leader squarely within Russia’s traditional sphere. The centerpiece is the Trump Route for International Peace and Prosperity (TRIPP), a roughly twenty-seven-mile corridor through Armenia’s Syunik province that would link the main body of Azerbaijan to its Nakhchivan exclave and onward to Turkey, built and operated by a development company in which the U.S. holds 74 percent for an initial forty-nine-year term. Passage of the constitutional change would give Washington its strongest position in the South Caucasus since independence and, through TRIPP, a chokepoint of the Middle Corridor just as securing non-Chinese supply lines for critical minerals has become a first-order priority.

CONCLUSIONS:

Armenia’s voters made the choice Civil Contract asked of them and handed the U.S. a strategic opening that did not exist a year ago. But an election is not a settlement. The referendum still lies ahead, carrying a real chance of failure, and Russia has shown it will spend, subvert, and coerce to keep Armenia within its grip; it will not stop because one vote went against it. For Washington, the work is beginning rather than ending. The endorsements and signing ceremonies were the easy part. Converting them into a durable foothold means seeing the constitutional process through, hardening Armenia against the next wave of Russian active measures, and breaking ground on TRIPP before the window closes. Pashinyan has staked his country’s future on the West, and the U.S. has every reason, and a narrowing amount of time, to ensure that bet pays off.

AUTHOR’S BIO: 

Joseph Epstein is the Director of the Turan Research Center, a Senior Fellow at the Yorktown Institute, an Expert at the N7 Foundation, and a Research Fellow at Bar-Ilan University’s Begin-Sadat Center for Strategic Studies.