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As the first week of Armenia’s official election campaign period draws to a close, tensions have escalated, accompanied by new criminal charges of vote-buying and insulting political rhetoric, including allegations that candidates are being controlled from abroad.
On Thursday, Armenian authorities announced three separate criminal cases and numerous arrests, two of which were related to alleged vote-buying.
In one case, an undisclosed number of members and supporters of former President Robert Kocharyan’s “Armenia” bloc were arrested in Spitak (Lori Province).
Authorities claim that the head of the bloc’s local office provided charitable aid at a time when a legislative ban on charitable activities was in effect ahead of the parliamentary elections scheduled for June 7. The same individual, along with others, is also accused of “obstructing the free exercise of the electoral right of a resident of the same region, manifested in the threat of violence against the latter.”
This marked the first such criminal case against the “Armenia” bloc, which rejected the allegations, calling the case “not a legal process, but another cheap attempt to obstruct the normal functioning of our structures.”
The bloc also stated that “the authorities are trying to create an atmosphere of fear through such methods,” characterizing Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan’s government as an “authoritarian regime.”
Separately, Armenian police reported that a man was detained in Yerevan on Wednesday while handing over 50,000 drams ($135) to another person as an alleged election bribe. Authorities did not disclose which political party the case was linked to.
In another case, Armenian authorities arrested and launched an investigation into a man after he posted an online address on Tuesday containing insults directed at Pashinyan. The criminal case was initiated on charges of public speech aimed at inciting or promoting hatred, discrimination, intolerance, or enmity.
On Thursday, Pashinyan praised Armenia’s law enforcement agencies for their “effective fight” against election bribery.
The following day, in line with the trend of recent months, reports emerged of new arrests of members or supporters of the “Strong Armenia” bloc, led by Russian-Armenian tycoon Samvel Karapetyan.
Rhetoric of “Hambals” and Claims of External Control
In addition to the arrests, Kocharyan called Pashinyan a “hambal” (a crude, uneducated, or primitive person) during a heated discussion on Thursday. Pashinyan later used the same term in his response.
Kocharyan stated that no one in Armenia’s history had previously spoken out “against [national] identity and the Church.” “Hey, you hambal, what do you have against this? What is driving you? In all seriousness, why are you hurting an entire nation? For whose sake?” Kocharyan asked.
He further suggested that Pashinyan is being controlled from the outside.
“I have the impression that there is some kind of remote control, and there is a chip in [Pashinyan’s] head, and this head is being controlled by that remote from somewhere—definitely not from Armenia. Now this man, in my opinion, has become like [Azerbaijani President Ilham] Aliyev’s lapdog,” Kocharyan said.
He also argued that such rhetoric was a response to Pashinyan “crossing the line” in his statements.
Earlier on Thursday, Pashinyan stated that Kocharyan should be imprisoned for the bloody crackdown on anti-government protests in March 2008, which occurred during Kocharyan’s presidency and claimed 10 lives. In turn, Kocharyan accused Pashinyan of being the “instigator and the main person responsible” for those events.
Kocharyan also claimed that while three former presidents of Nagorno-Karabakh are imprisoned in Azerbaijan, Pashinyan received instructions via “remote control” to imprison the fourth, Kocharyan, in Armenia.
Before moving to Armenia, Kocharyan served as the president of Nagorno-Karabakh from 1994 to 1997.
“Kocharyan said that the word ‘hambal’ is accepted in the Civil Contract party. That is true, because when we talk about him, we use that very word—hambal,” Pashinyan said in his response in a Facebook video on Thursday evening.
In another video, he challenged Kocharyan to write the word “identity” live on air, in what appeared to be a jab at Kocharyan’s linguistic skills.
“Western Azerbaijan” vs. the Union State
Karapetyan, whose “Strong Armenia” bloc is expected to be the main rival to Pashinyan’s Civil Contract party in the upcoming elections, also stated on Thursday that Armenian border villages have become deserted due to demographic trends. He further claimed that if Pashinyan is re-elected, 300,000 Azerbaijanis will be resettled in Armenia.
The claim about the resettlement of Azerbaijanis in Armenia has become a recurring talking point for Karapetyan and other opposition figures. In turn, Pashinyan rejected these accusations, calling them “lies.”
“Such an issue has never been on our agenda with Azerbaijan, nor on our broader international agenda. These people are now spending millions of dollars to create and inject this agenda into the political life of the Republic of Armenia. Only foreign spies act in this manner,” Pashinyan stated on Friday.
In addition to statements by politicians, AI-generated videos have also circulated online, including claims that if Pashinyan is re-elected, Armenia will become “Western Azerbaijan,” while if the opposition comes to power, Armenia will join a “Union State” with Russia and Belarus.
In recent years, Azerbaijan has launched a campaign around the concept of “Western Azerbaijan”—a term that refers not to its own territory, but to part or all of the territory of the Republic of Armenia.
OC Media: For ease of reading, we have chosen not to use qualifiers such as “de facto,” “unrecognized,” or “partially recognized” when discussing institutions or political positions in Abkhazia, Nagorno-Karabakh, and South Ossetia. This does not imply that we take any position on their status.