Russia’s covert efforts to stop Armenia’s pivot West
Written by: Tom Balmforth, Gram Slattery, Humeyra Pamuk and Lucy Papachristou
LONDON/WASHINGTON, May 29 (Reuters) – Russia has intensified covert efforts to undermine Armenia’s leader’s re-election bid next month, fearing that victory would enable the former Soviet republic to readjust to the West, according to Western intelligence and government officials.
Moscow’s plans ahead of the June 7 election include disinformation campaigns in favor of pro-Russian candidates and an audacious plan to transport tens of thousands of Russian-Armenians to influence the vote, according to interviews with five Western intelligence officials and documents seen by Reuters.
Armenia, a landlocked country of 3 million people, has remained mostly in Moscow’s orbit and hosts Russian troops since the Cold War. But Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan, who is leading in the polls, moved closer to Europe and NATO on Wednesday as an ally of US President Donald Trump, who supports Pashinyan’s re-election bid.
US Secretary of State Marco Rubio flew to Yerevan this week to sign a mining agreement and an agreement for Trump’s International Route for Peace and Prosperity (a proposed transportation corridor through Armenia that could further erode Russian influence in the region).
Armenia, a member of the Russian-led economic union, suspended its participation in Moscow’s regional security alliance in 2024. This month, European leaders hosted the NATO chief at a summit.
Russian President Vladimir Putin did not hide his displeasure with Pashinyan’s course of action. In recent days, Moscow has warned that Armenia risks losing its supply of cheap natural gas and has restricted imports of Armenian products, including fruits, vegetables, flowers and brandy.
“What Pashinyan is trying to do is a threat to Russia,” said Thomas de Waal, senior researcher at Carnegie Europe. Diversification “means Russia losing the virtual monopoly it had in Armenia.”
Moscow’s preferred candidate is billionaire Samvel Karapetyan, who is on trial for allegedly calling for the overthrow of the government, three Western officials said.
Armenian-Russian Karapetyan denies the accusations. His lawyer, Robert Amsterdam, told Reuters his client had no knowledge of Russian support.
Europe has long accused Russia of interfering in elections; most recently in Moldova and Hungary. Russia claims that by intervening in countries close to the borders of the EU and the USA, they are drawing them into the West’s sphere of influence.
In response to a request for comment, Russia’s foreign ministry said the Reuters news contained false statements and promoted “anti-Russian rhetoric.”
The Armenian government’s communications department declined to comment on the specific allegations made in this story but outlined measures taken to combat disinformation and ensure elections were free, fair and transparent.
VOTER TRANSPORT FROM RUSSIA
In October, the Kremlin created a department known as the Directorate for Strategic Cooperation and Partnership, which oversees influence operations in Armenia, four of the sources said. The sources, like others in this story, spoke on condition of anonymity.
Russian officials have discussed sending Russia-based Armenians to vote for Pashinyan’s opponents in recent months, five of the sources said.
Armenians make up a large global diaspora, including a population in Russia that exceeds 2 million by some estimates. Armenians are not allowed to vote in elections abroad.
A senior US official source said the amount of people Moscow could manage to move was a matter of debate within the intelligence community. But the source said intelligence officials are taking the idea seriously. Armenians routinely travel between countries, with dozens of flights departing each day.
Russian officials have estimated a cost of about $50 million to transport 100,000 voters, three of the sources said. Officials added that in mid-May, the Kremlin determined the quotas of Armenians it should send to each region and requested a report from administrators on the preparations.
Reuters could not determine whether such a plan had been implemented or whether it would be enough to close the wide gap among the frontrunners.
A poll conducted earlier this month suggested Pashinyan’s Civil Contract party would come first with around 30% of the votes.
In the poll, Karapetyan’s Strong Armenia party comes in second place in a crowded field, with around 6 percent of the votes.
USA BROUGHT THE PEACE AGREEMENT
Pashinyan took office in 2018, when his pro-Moscow predecessor was overthrown by protests. Relations deteriorated after Russian peacekeepers serving in Nagorno-Karabakh, an ethnically Armenian separatist region in the country’s neighbor Azerbaijan, failed to prevent the region from falling to Azerbaijan in 2023.
In August, Pashinyan reached a US-brokered peace agreement to end the decades-long dispute between Armenia and Azerbaijan over the disputed region. The agreement will open a transport route through southern Armenia, allowing goods to flow eastwards towards Central Asia, in exchange for Azerbaijan providing direct access to Nakhchivan and Türkiye. Moscow cautiously welcomed the agreement.
Washington said US-backed security personnel could monitor the narrow strip of land along the Iranian border; intelligence officials said Russia found it unacceptable.
Key elements of Trump’s peace efforts will likely come to nothing if Pashinyan loses power, according to two Western officials.
In a video circulating online in May, masked men speaking the Armenian dialect threatened to kill Pashinyan. Reuters was unable to determine whether the threat was real or who was behind it. The incident is being investigated in Armenia.
Three sources, including a senior US official, described serious and ongoing concerns about the Armenian leader’s security, without going into detail.
Elements of the U.S. government, including the CIA, secretly assisted in Pashinyan’s personal protection in recent years, according to a current U.S. official, a former U.S. official and a third person with knowledge of the arrangement. One source said the assistance included sharing information about potential threats.
The White House, the State Department, the US Director of National Intelligence and Pashinyan’s office did not respond to requests for comment on the prime minister’s security situation. The CIA declined to comment.
INCREASING DISINFORMATION
Russian authorities are stepping up existing online disinformation campaigns to discredit Pashinyan’s government, the officials added.
In one example, the US official said, a Russian-backed online campaign falsely claimed a corrupt land deal involving Pashinyan with Jeanne Shaheen and Thom Tillis (two US senators who publicly expressed concerns about Russian disinformation in April). Shaheen and Tillis did not respond to a request for comment.
A European official said the campaigns involved a botnet affiliated with the Kremlin known as “Storm-1516” and that it played a role in efforts to interfere in the recent US election.
Three of the sources said the Kremlin received help from Russian political consultancies and think tanks, including the Social Design Agency (SDA), which has been sanctioned in the European Union and the United Kingdom for spreading disinformation to undermine support for Ukraine.
Reuters reviewed five Russian documents that sources said were prepared by the SDA. The news organization could not independently confirm that the SDA had prepared the documents.
One of the documents suggested the creation of a media outlet called Yerevan1 to promote Pashinyan’s “negative attitude” among the Armenian diaspora in Russia and the “core narrative” that “Armenia can only develop in close alliance with Russia and under its protection.” Neither SDA nor Yerevan1 responded to requests for comment.
The document evaluated that Russian-Armenians could play a decisive role in the elections if “high participation is achieved among them”.
(Reporting by Tom Balmforth in London, Gram Slattery and Humeyra Pamuk in Washington and Lucy Papachristou in Tbilisi; Additional reporting by Filip Lebedev in London and Jonathan Landay in Washington; Editing by Mike Collett-White and Frank Jack Daniel)
