According to pre-election polls, Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan and his ruling party Civic Contract should defend their positions at the head of the country with a profit of around 32 percent, writes the Reuters agency. The opposition pro-Russian party Strong Armenia should finish in second place with 11 percent.
Armenia was one of Russia’s allies, and hosts a Russian military base on its territory. Recently, however, Prime Minister Pashinyan has been striving for closer ties with the West. Relations between Yerevan and Moscow have intensified in recent years. In addition, Armenia adopted a law last year declaring its intention to seek membership in the European Union.
As for relations with Azerbaijan, they are strongly marked by contradictions over the territory of Nagorno-Karabakh, which is an internationally recognized part of Azerbaijan, but historically the majority of the Armenian population lived there. Both countries have fought two wars over this region in recent decades.
In 2023, in a lightning military operation, Baku regained control of the region and ended the decades-long rule of Armenian separatists there. The Armenian army, like the Russian troops present, did not intervene militarily in the fighting.
The opposition and part of society blame Pashinyan for capitulating to Azerbaijan, with whose president Ilham Aliyev, the prime minister signed a declaration in Washington last year in the presence of US President Donald Trump, in which the leaders commit to peace.
