Russia has intensified covert efforts to undermine Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan’s bid for re-election next month, fearing his victory could lock in the country’s realignment with the West, Reuters reported citing Western intelligence and government officials.
Moscow’s plans ahead of the June 7 election have included disinformation campaigns in favor of pro-Russian candidates and an audacious scheme to transport tens of thousands of Russian-Armenians to sway the vote, according to interviews with five Western intelligence officials and documents seen by Reuters.
Reuters highlighted that Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan, who is leading in the polls, has moved closer to Europe and NATO, emerging as an ally of U.S. President Donald Trump, who on Wednesday endorsed Pashinyan’s re-election bid.
Moscow’s preferred candidate, three of the Western officials said, is Samvel Karapetyan, a billionaire on trial for allegedly calling for the overthrow of the government.
Karapetyan, who is Armenian-Russian, denies the charges. His lawyer, Robert Amsterdam, told Reuters his client had no knowledge of Russian support.
Europe has long accused Russia of election meddling, most recently in Moldova and Hungary. Russia alleges that the EU and the United States interfere in countries near its borders to pull them into the West’s sphere of influence. Thursday told reporters that claims Russia was interfering in Armenia’s internal affairs were “spymania.”
Armenia’s government communications department declined to comment on the specific allegations made in this story, but outlined measures being taken to tackle disinformation and ensure the elections would be free, fair, and transparent, according to Reuters.
In October, the Kremlin established a department known as the Directorate for Strategic Cooperation and Partnership, which, four of the sources said, is overseeing influence operations in Armenia. The sources, like others in this story, spoke on condition of anonymity.
Russian officials have in recent months discussed sending Russia-based Armenians to vote for Pashinyan's opponents, five of the sources said.
Armenians make up a large global diaspora, including a population in Russia that some estimates put at over 2 million. Armenians are not allowed to vote in elections from abroad.
One source, a senior U.S. official, said the volumes of people that Moscow could succeed in transporting was a matter of debate within the intelligence community. However, the source said, intelligence officials take the idea seriously. Armenians routinely travel between the nations, and dozens of flights depart daily.
Russian authorities calculated a cost of about $50 million to transport 100,000 voters, three of the sources said. By mid-May, the Kremlin had issued quotas of Armenians each region should send and requested administrators report back on preparations, those officials added.
Reuters was unable to establish whether such a plan was underway or whether it would be enough to close the wide gap between the frontrunners.
A poll conducted earlier this month suggested Pashinyan's Civil Contract party will finish first with around 30% of the vote.
At around 6%, the poll put Karapetyan's Strong Armenia party at a distant second in a crowded field.
Should Pashinyan lose power, key elements of Trump's peace effort would likely fizzle, according to two Western officials.
Three of the sources, including a senior U.S. official, described serious and ongoing concerns regarding the Armenian leader's safety, without elaborating. Reuters pointed to the video that circulated online in May, showing masked men speaking an Armenian dialect threatening to kill Pashinyan.
Russian officials have stepped up existing online disinformation campaigns to discredit the Pashinyan government, the officials added.
One European official said the campaigns involve a Kremlin-affiliated bot network known as "Storm-1516", which played a role in efforts to interfere with recent U.S. elections.
Three of the sources said the Kremlin had enlisted Russian political consultancies and think-tanks, including the Social Design Agency (SDA), sanctioned in the European Union and the United Kingdom for spreading disinformation to undermine support for Ukraine.
Reuters reviewed five Russian-language documents that the sources said were drawn up by SDA. The news organization could not independently verify that SDA drew up the documents.
One of the documents proposed creating a media outlet called Yerevan1 for Russia's Armenian diaspora to promote a "negative attitude" of Pashinyan with a "core narrative" that "Armenia can only prosper in a close alliance with Russia and under its protection." Neither SDA nor Yerevan1 responded to comment requests.
The document assessed that Russian-Armenians could play a decisive role in the election if "high turnout among them can be ensured".
