YEREVAN, Armenia — The best of a bad lot was how many Armenians described victorious Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan ahead of Sunday's pivotal election — the first since the bitter defeat in the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict with neighboring Azerbaijan.

While the election has frequently been framed outside Armenia as

Russian Foreign Ministry spokesperson Maria Zakharova claimed the vote had taken place "amidst severe repression" and that democratic procedures were "grossly violated."

European policy in the South Caucasus is increasingly caught between proclaimed values and pragmatic interests. While headlines often portray Azerbaijan’s suspension of parliamentary cooperation with the European Parliament as a routine diplomatic spat between Brussels and Baku, the move reveals something more significant: a profound transformation in Europe’s relations with the post-Soviet space—one increasingly defined […]