Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan’s party won a majority in the country’s parliamentary elections, marking a victory for Donald Trump after the president endorsed him.
Pashinyan first took power in 2018 in the so-called Velvet Revolution, then won again in the 2021 snap elections triggered by his crushing loss of the Second Nagorno-Karabakh War against Azerbaijan. Armenia held its first regular election since he first took power in 2018 on Sunday, during which he won reelection with a vote total far above his closest rival.
Recommended Stories
The latest preliminary results on Monday gave Pashinyan’s Civil Contract party 49.82% of the vote, the Associated Press reported, with the pro-Russian Samvel Karapetyan’s Strong Armenia bloc coming in second with 23.28% of the vote. The Armenia Alliance bloc led by former President Robert Kocharyan is hovering around 10%, while the rest of the splintered opposition remained in the mid to low single digits.
The election was held while Karapetyan was under house arrest over charges of conspiring to overthrow the government, charges he and his supporters reject as politically motivated.
Similar charges were leveled against several other rival candidates ahead of the election, spurring accusations of authoritarianism and corruption against Pashinyan’s government.
Pashinyan celebrated his victory as early results made clear the outcome.
“The people of Armenia voted for peace, regional prosperity, and regional cooperation, and I hope this will be met with a positive response from Turkey and Azerbaijan,” he said at his campaign headquarters.
Pashinyan campaigned on drawing closer ties to the West, in part through brokering a lasting peace with longtime enemies Azerbaijan and Turkey. The move is politically controversial due to Armenia’s troubled past with the two powers, but the opposition remained too fractured and scarred by association with past corruption to put up a considerable fight.
Pashinyan also repeatedly sought to soothe those fearful of severing ties with Russia, Armenia’s historical protector. He vowed that the election wasn’t a referendum on choosing between Russia and the West.
Though Pashinyan won a clear victory, it wasn’t a total one. His party failed to win a supermajority, barring him from amending the constitution to give up Armenia’s claims to the Nagorno-Karabakh region, a central demand of Azerbaijan as a precondition for a lasting peace deal.
Pashinyan’s commitment to the Washington-brokered peace agreement, written last year, earned him the endorsement of Trump, who hailed the Armenian leader as a “great friend and Leader” making Armenia “strong, wealthy, and very secure!”
“Nikol completely shares my vision of PEACE and PROSPERITY for Armenia and the entire South Caucasus region,” Trump posted on Truth Social last month, hailing progress made during Secretary of State Marco Rubio’s recent visit to Armenia.
“For these reasons, Nikol has my COMPLETE and TOTAL Endorsement for Re-Election on June 7, 2026,” Trump said. “With Nikol’s help, we will bring the United States, Armenia, the South Caucasus, and Central Asia to greater heights than ever before. Make (Armenia) Great Again — MAGA!”
Pashinyan’s victory comes as no surprise, as it had been clearly indicated in polling for some time. The economic boom brought in by human capital from Russians and Ukrainians fleeing to the country over the Russian invasion of Ukraine helped offset concerns about his divisive foreign policy.
The election was also the first since Armenia completely lost the Nagorno-Karabakh region in 2023, triggering an exodus of over 100,000 ethnic Armenians.
Pashinyan has implemented the complete transformation of Armenia’s position in the region and the world, going from a de facto protectorate of Russia to one bordering on hostility. His overtures toward the United States and the European Union have intensified over the past year due to the efforts of the Trump administration, which brokered a preliminary peace deal to end the decades-long Nagorno-Karabakh conflict.
TRUMP BACKS ARMENIAN LEADER AFTER COUNTRY PIVOTS TO ALIGN WITH US AND TURKEY
Even more radically, over the past several months, the prime minister completely reversed his position on Azerbaijan, Nagorno-Karabakh, and Turkey. He has begun insisting Nagorno-Karabakh never belonged to Armenia, a hugely unpopular notion in his country and one that has sparked verbal battles with citizens in public. He’s also begun pitching Azerbaijan and Turkey, Armenia’s historical enemies, as natural friends.
The election showed that economic concerns and the failure of the opposition to form a coherent counter to Pashinyan outweighed the unpopularity of some of his foreign policy ventures.
