Letter From the Editors

Armenians will go to the polls on June 7 to vote in parliamentary elections that will set their country’s future geopolitical course. The pack of contenders is led by current Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan, who is hoping for a new term to pursue Armenia’s pivot away from Russia and toward the West. His main rivals include pro-Russia parties and blocs led by the familiar figures of Samvel Karapetyan, Gagik Tsarukyan and Robert Kocharyan. Finally, there is the Against All party, whose members are, as NGE’s Yana Shlor puts it, “fed up with everything” and even went so far as to wear Marvel hero costumes when they registered the party at the Central Electoral Commission in early 2026.

According to Shlor, “everything happening in Armenian politics right now” is a response to Armenia’s “national trauma” of losing Nagorno-Karabakh. Most analysts agree. As Aik Khalatyan explains in Izvestia, Pashinyan has used the passive position taken by Russia and CSTO states during recent years of the conflict with Azerbaijan to stoke “Armenian society’s deep disappointment with the country’s alliance with Russia.” Now, he says, the Armenian authorities are pursuing a “Moldova scenario” to restrict the participation of pro-Russian parties in the elections and have increased repressions against Karapetyan in particular. But while Chisinau “has reduced economic cooperation with Russia to a minimum,” Yerevan wants to “to maintain its lucrative economic cooperation with Russia for as long as possible,” even as it ends its security cooperation with that country.

Needless to say, this position has ruffled the feathers of Putin and his EaEU counterparts, who, at a recent summit in Astana, set a deadline of December 2026 for Armenia to decide which organization it wants to be a member of – the EaEU or the EU. Now Russia’s agricultural watchdog has imposed bans on Armenian products, and Putin is threatening to raise gas prices for Armenia. As Shlor writes, “The message between the lines is clear: If you leave, what happened to Ukraine will happen to you.”

Indeed, if Armenia’s situation sounds familiar, that’s because it is: Ukraine has seen similar post-independence twists and turns, culminating in its invasion by that same Russia. But, after four-plus years of war, Ukraine appears to be on the offensive. As Ukrainian political commentator Leonid Shvets notes, by marking the opening of the annual St. Petersburg International Economic Forum with drone attacks that caused plumes of smoke to rise over the forum’s hometown, Zelensky demonstrated that Ukraine has become “even more insolent,” instead of “acquiescent.”

As for the forum itself (which Shvets calls Putin’s “favorite toy”), it was clear that, for all of Russia’s economic bluster, it doesn’t really have that much economic leverage at all. With near-zero growth, industrial stagnation, a sharp decline in investments and an inflation rate nearing 6%, there is, as Anastasia Bashkatova describes in NG, “a pressing need for a prompt and efficient analysis of measures taken by the economic authorities.” As usual, though, Putin, in his address to the plenary session, blamed the West for the troubles, saying it uses its economic model “as a tool of political pressure and unfair competition.” Putin emphasized that technological progress is the key to sovereignty.

But can Russia achieve the much-needed technological breakthroughs? According to right-wing philosopher Aleksandr Dugin, “we need a Stalinist call to action.” To him, “liberal paradigms and comprador elites are blocking our development, particularly in the areas of thoughts and self-awareness,” and there can be no technological progress without a “leap forward in self-awareness.” The NG editorial board, however, dismisses his arguments, writing that “spirituality is not self-proclaimed” and that Dugin “is not worth his salt,” while also pointing out that the “liberal paradigm” has not prevented new technologies from being developed in the West.

But wherever you stand on this issue, it’s clear that Moscow’s level of spiritual awareness is not yet high enough to expect any breakthroughs – technological or otherwise – any time soon.