Separately, a \u20ac12m EU package to \u201ccounter disinformation\u201d ahead of the 7 June elections channels funds through institutions directly under the government\u2019s influence. <\/p>\n
Armenia\u2019s opposition and many independent observers have characterised this support as green light for election manipulation by conferring European legitimacy on a government that has done nothing to earn it.<\/p>\n
Under an emergency legislative procedure permitting adoption within 24 hours \u2014 a timeline that makes public deliberation impossible \u2014 the ruling Civil Contract party pushed through sweeping Electoral Code amendments, including granting authorities broad new powers to disqualify election observer organisations. <\/p>\n
Brussels issued no public response.<\/p>\n
Samvel Karapetyan<\/a>, Armenia\u2019s leading opposition figure, an Armenian-Russian businessman, and a principal financial backer of the Armenian Apostolic Church, remains under house arrest on charges widely described in Armenia as fabricated.<\/p>\n The EU, which conditions candidate country negotiations on judicial independence, has not linked either case to its programming in Armenia.<\/p>\n A Brussels success story?<\/p>\n Brussels would counter that Armenia is a success story, a country that signed a Comprehensive and Enhanced Partnership Agreement<\/a> with the EU and expressed aspirations toward European integration. <\/p>\n But Pashinyan\u2019s own words tell a different story. <\/p>\n Presenting his party\u2019s official election programme, he declared that \u201cit is difficult to overestimate the importance of our relations with Russia\u201d and vowed<\/a> he \u201cwill not allow any attempts to create problems in Armenia\u2013Russia relations.\u201d<\/p>\n He has gone further still: those who seek to \u201cundermine Armenian\u2013Russian friendship and brotherhood,\u201d he announced, \u201care simply foreign agents\u201d, using the precise term the Kremlin uses to silence dissidents and suppress opposition. <\/p>\n His European overtures are a negotiating card \u2014 played to extract resources and legitimacy while he remains firmly tethered to Moscow and Ankara. <\/p>\n The EU is not witnessing a geopolitical pivot. It is being played.<\/p>\n This should surprise no one who has followed the record closely. As this author documented in a 2024 ECIPE Policy Brief<\/a>, there is evidence that suggests Pashinyan could have met with Sergey Naryshkin, the head of Russia\u2019s Foreign Intelligence Service, in Moscow as far back as 2015, three years before his celebrated \u201cVelvet Revolution.\u201d <\/p>\n Once in power, he sent Armenian troops to serve alongside Russian forces in Syria, something his predecessors refused to do, chaired the Eurasian Union Summit in Moscow as recently as May 2024, and has visited Putin several dozen times since coming to power in 2018. <\/p>\n The EU is not financing a democratic partner. It is subsidising a Russian asset.<\/p>\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/dk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/05\/01a3dedb420715d904699ab3aa273712-600x512.jpeg\")
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