Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan's pro-Western ruling party has come out on top in the country's parliamentary election, preliminary final results showed following Sunday's vote.
Some 49.8% of Armenians voted for Pashinyan's Civil Contract party, the Central Electoral Commission said on Monday.
The pro-Russian Strong Armenia party, led by billionaire Samvel Karapetyan, came in second with 23.3%.
Voter turnout stood at 59%, significantly higher than in the previous parliamentary election in 2021.
Former president Robert Kocharyan came third with his Armenia alliance, which secured just under 10% of the vote.
Kocharyan is said to have excellent relations with Russian President Vladimir Putin.
The pro-Russian Prosperous Armenia Party looked initially set to enter parliament with 4% of the vote. However, the electoral commission later put the party at 3.996%, meaning it would have failed to clear the required hurdle by a razor-thin margin.
The chairman of the electoral commission, Vahagn Hovakimyan, stressed that the figures were preliminary and subject to review and correction.
Pashinyan's Civil Contract has won 61 of the 105 seats in the National Assembly, according to the preliminary results.
OSCE lauds professional election process
Meanwhile, observers from the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE) described the election as a “genuine choice” for voters following a tense campaign.
“Armenia’s voters were given – and took – the opportunity to make a genuine choice in a professionally managed election process and a vibrant and pluralistic, if often highly polarized campaign,” Janez Lenarčič, head of the election observation mission from the OSCE Office for Democratic Institutions and Human Rights, said in a statement.
But Farah Karimi, Special Coordinator and leader of the short-term OSCE observer mission, added: “The concentration of arrests and criminal prosecutions against opposition figures contributed to perceptions of selective justice, while a polarized media landscape, inflammatory rhetoric, misinformation, and persistent foreign pressure and interference challenged Armenia’s democratic resilience and the integrity of public debate.”
“This underscores the importance of continued efforts to strengthen democratic institutions, safeguard fundamental freedoms, and foster public trust in democratic processes,” Karimi asserted.
Arrests and bomb threats ahead of the vote
The election, held against the backdrop of high tensions with Russia, was marked by arrests, bomb threats and finger pointing.
Karapetyan said more than 100 of his supporters had been detained over the past two days. "At this very moment, further arrests of our supporters are taking place," he said as he cast his vote.
Karapetyan, who also holds a Russian passport, has himself been under house arrest for months. The authorities accuse him of attempting a coup in connection with unrest earlier this year.
The Interior Ministry justified the arrests around election day by citing allegations of attempted vote-buying.
In Gyumri, the country's second-largest city, police searched the Strong Armenia offices, according to media reports.
Three members of a local electoral commission were also taken into custody during the night.
The police also responded to several anonymous bomb threats, which reportedly turned out to be false.
Geopolitical tensions
Relations with Russia were the defining issue of the election. Tensions between Russia and Armenia have grown sharply in recent months over Yerevan's pursuit of closer ties with the European Union.
Moscow has imposed import bans on Armenian products and threatened to terminate a favourable gas supply contract.
An Armenian government official accused Moscow of attempted vote-buying, alleging that Armenians living in Russia had been flown home specifically to vote for pro-Russian parties in exchange for payment.
The authorities have opened several criminal investigations, but the government has not presented any concrete evidence to support the allegations.
Relations with Azerbaijan were also central to the campaign. Pashinyan is working on a peace treaty with Azerbaijan, three years after Armenia lost a military conflict with its neighbour over the disputed region of Nagorno-Karabakh.
More than 100,000 ethnic Armenians were forced to flee following Azerbaijan's violent conquest of the territory, with the opposition accusing Pashinyan of betraying the national interest.
The prime minister has received backing from the US government under President Donald Trump. Secretary of State Marco Rubio made a special stopover in Yerevan to sign a bilateral cooperation agreement.
The government, in turn, has accused parts of the opposition of acting on behalf of the Kremlin and stressed the importance of peace in the region.
