Putin’s Campaign against Armenian PM Backfiring, Polls Suggest

Paul Goble

            Staunton, May 30 – Vladimir Putin’s efforts to defeat Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan because of the latter’s turn to Europe, by highlighting just how thuggish Moscow can be, are backfiring, with the share of Armenians saying they will vote for Pashinyan’s party rising from 24 percent when Putin began his campaign to 32 percent now.

            That rise has left Pashinyan’s opponents, many of whom are pro-Russian, far behind with none having more than six percent now, down from nine percent three months ago, according to International Republican Institute polls (caspianpost.com/opinion/moscow-wanted-to-hurt-pashinyan-it-may-have-done-the-opposite).

            Unless something changes dramatically in the next week, Pashinyan and his party are likely to win enough votes to continue their turn to the West, yet another case where Putin’s heavy-handed approach has not only failed to achieve his goals but in fact has left his country in a worse position than it was.

            Had Putin now adopted such thuggish positions, in fact, Pashinyan might be doing less well and his opponents better; but Putin’s statements and behavior has reminded Armenians of all the reason they have to seek to get out from under Russian dominance and seek to become part of the European Union.

            But because thuggish behavior often is how authoritarian leaders rose to power and because it is often popular among their supporters, Putin and others in this category are likely to continue to behave as they do especially abroad and thus lose some of the positions their countries had earlier.