Russia Tried to Occupy Armenia Though Bringing Its Proxies to Power, and They Failed: Daniel Ioannisyan at the OSCE

On October 12, at the OSCE ODIHR Human Dimension Conference in Warsaw, Daniel Ioannisyan, Program Coordinator at the Union of Informed Citizens NGO, highlighted concerns regarding Armenia’s 2026 parliamentary elections.

In his remarks, Ioannisyan drew attention to Russian interference, unlawful campaign financing, instances of vote-buying, shortcomings in election administration, and isolated cases of abuse of administrative resources.

«Ladies and gentlemen,

As you probably know, Armenia held parliamentary elections in June this year.

While the will of Armenian citizens regarding who should govern the country and who should serve as the main opposition force is fairly reflected in the election results, we also observed a number of problems that deserve to be mentioned.

First of all, the biggest problem during these elections was Russian interference, through 4 main channels.

1. Russia relied on proxy actors to impact the media atmosphere – including politicians, some fake NGOs and media outlets – to amplify Kremlin narratives and support pro-Russian political parties.
2. Efforts were made to organize and bring Armenian citizens living in Russia to Armenia to vote on e-day.
3. Financial support was directed toward some openly and under-covered pro-Russian actors: media outlets, politicians, opinion leaders and fake NGOs.
4. Shortly before the elections, Russia applied sanctions affecting the Armenian economy.

Another major problem was illegal campaign financing. Gaps in the existing regulations, particularly the absence of proper rules on third-party campaign actors, created opportunities to finance election campaigns while bypassing all the restrictions and transparency regulations.

The next serious problem was vote buying. Hundreds of people were charged, and every time someone was arrested on vote-buying charges, recordings, wiretapped conversations were published as evidence.

Another huge problem in the election context was the electoral administration, where we clearly saw a regression in the level of organization of elections. The electoral administration failed to unregister political parties that were accused of distributing an enormous amount of vote bribes.

CEC also cancelled the results in three polling stations, which resulted in one of the political parties that had initially passed the threshold for entering parliament falling below the threshold.

The last problem related to the elections that we would like to mention was the number of isolated cases of misuse of administrative resources in favor of the ruling party, which were not properly investigated.

Ladies and gentlemen, 3 months ago Russia tried to occupy Armenia though bringing its proxies to power. And they failed.

Thank you!»