On April 1, two months before Armenia’s parliamentary elections, Russian President Vladimir Putin invited Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan to Moscow for bilateral talks. Their conversation made Putin visibly uncomfortable. The Russian president insisted that Armenia must choose between Russia’s Eurasian Economic Union and the European Union, arguing that Moscow’s experience with Ukraine demonstrated the impossibility of membership in both.

Pashinyan, who speaks fluent Russian, countered that Armenia’s membership in the Eurasian Economic Union remains fully compatible with deepening and diversifying relations with the European Union. As he put it, legally and administratively, this joint engagement with both blocs is real, and “it is a fact.” Putin repeatedly pressed that Armenia needs to make a geopolitical choice. Pashinyan responded by emphasizing Armenia’s commitment to maintaining strong ties with Russia while simultaneously expanding its relationships with other partners.

On April 1, two months before Armenia’s parliamentary elections, Russian President Vladimir Putin invited Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan to Moscow for bilateral talks. Their conversation made Putin visibly uncomfortable. The Russian president insisted that Armenia must choose between Russia’s Eurasian Economic Union and the European Union, arguing that Moscow’s experience with Ukraine demonstrated the impossibility of membership in both.

Pashinyan, who speaks fluent Russian, countered that Armenia’s membership in the Eurasian Economic Union remains fully compatible with deepening and diversifying relations with the European Union. As he put it, legally and administratively, this joint engagement with both blocs is real, and “it is a fact.” Putin repeatedly pressed that Armenia needs to make a geopolitical choice. Pashinyan responded by emphasizing Armenia’s commitment to maintaining strong ties with Russia while simultaneously expanding its relationships with other partners.

As Putin advanced what could be called the Kremlin’s false geopolitical binary, Pashinyan responded with a form of geopolitical jujitsu, highlighting mutual interest, underscoring legal dimensions of Armenia’s membership in Eurasian Economic Union, and leveraging his country’s continued participation in Russia-centric institutions. Pashinyan argued that a more stable and regionally integrated South Caucasus would ultimately strengthen Armenia-Russia relations as well.

The meeting was a dramatic enactment of the clash between Putin’s wish to impose Russia on Armenia and Pashinyan’s efforts for “balanced and balancing” foreign policy for his country. Two months later, elections gave Pashinyan’s Civil Contract party a parliamentary majority. This denied the Russia-linked opposition a path to power.

While congratulations quickly arrived from abroad, Russia has yet to recognize the results. Instead, Russia-linked parties have challenged the outcome while hinting at mobilizing social unrest. When the Constitutional Court upheld the results earlier this month, five out of 18 political parties—two of which have cleared the electoral threshold to enter parliament—announced their intention to remove “the current regime” and begin “a new, more systematic, institutional and large-scale phase of political resistance.”

Pashinyan may have described the election outcome as “historic,” but Russia still succeeded in reasserting its stake over Armenia’s opposition and parliamentary integrity more broadly.

It is for this and other reasons that viewing the parliamentary election results merely as a geopolitical “pivot” away from Russia and toward the West—the dominant interpretation in global media—is an incomplete analysis.........

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