Armenia wants to continue moving closer to the European Union. Like Moldova almost a year ago, the ideological battle between Moscow and Brussels has marked Sunday's elections in this small country in the South Caucasus and has endorsed the current government of Nikol Pashinyan. The prime minister's party, Civil Contract, has won practically 50% of the votes. The three pro-Russian parties have garnered 37% of the votes and have strengthened their presence in Parliament, led by Armenian Strong, the formation of Russian-Armenian billionaire Samvel Karapetyan, currently under house arrest for allegedly advocating the overthrow of the government.

There was no surprise in Armenia's legislative elections. The party of Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan has achieved a comfortable victory that will allow him to form a government and continue with the strategy of approaching the European Union and the United States and distancing himself from Russia. These results also validate the peace process initiated by the Armenian leader almost a year ago to put an end to a conflict of nearly four decades with Azerbaijan. However, the parliamentary majority is insufficient to amend the Constitution and remove the claim to the Nagorno-Karabakh territory, as Baku demands to finalize the agreement.

This Sunday, Armenia will hold its first elections since Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan decided to leave the Russian orbit, convinced that his historical ally was no longer capable of guaranteeing its security. In recent years, Armenia has embarked on an unprecedented course towards Europe and the United States in search of new partners, and Western leaders openly support the current government, which is the favorite for re-election. Meanwhile, Vladimir Putin has launched a campaign of economic pressure to sow fear among the population.

For the first time, Vladimir Putin is concerned about the results of parliamentary elections in Armenia like those of this Sunday. If the polls are confirmed and the prime minister, the liberal Nikol Pashinyan, renews his mandate, the Kremlin may find itself with an Armenia willing to stop being a Russian protectorate.

“Don’t you dare say I surrendered Karabakh!”, shouted Armenia’s Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan a few weeks ago at a refugee from that territory with whom he started arguing on the Yerevan metro. In September 2023, Azerbaijan invaded the self-proclaimed Republic of Artsakh, a territory in dispute since the fall of the Soviet Union, and expelled the more than 100,000 ethnic Armenian inhabitants who remained there. Neither Pashinyan, nor Karabakh’s ally Vladimir Putin, nor any leader from the Western world did anything to prevent it. That defeat is still an open wound today for tens of thousands of displaced people and a national trauma that the Armenian candidate for re-election, in Sunday’s legislative elections, is trying to bury.

Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan and Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev signed a peace agreement at the White House on Friday. Sitting between the two leaders was US President Donald Trump, who is hoping to score points toward the Nobel Peace Prize. "Thirty-five years of death and hatred, and now it will be love and success together," the Republican celebrated, also taking the opportunity to once again speak about the war in Ukraine and assert that it could end "very soon." He has been saying this for six months. Even so, he again accepted some of the Kremlin's demands to end the conflict and said that "a certain exchange of territories for the benefit of both parties" will be necessary.

Rescue teams found the body of the missing Catalan hiker on Wednesday. due to the avalanche of snow that occurred this Monday on the highest mountain in Armenia, the Aragats, which reaches an altitude of over 4,000 meters. The victim's name was David Sala, fifty years old, and a resident of Sant Joan de les Abadesses, in the Ripollès region. He was an experienced hiker, according to sources close to him, and he set out accompanied by eight other experienced skiers on this ski mountaineering expedition that ended tragically. The other mountaineers, all Catalans, were able to escape the avalanche and were rescued in time.

Rescue teams found the body of the Catalan hiker who went missing yesterday due to the snow avalanche that occurred on Armenia's highest mountain, Mount Aragats, which is over 4,000 meters high. "Armenian search and rescue teams found the body of the missing Spanish mountaineer on Mount Aragats," the Armenian Rescue Service reported in a statement, specifying that the discovery took place at 10:15 a.m. local time.