On 25th June, Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan announced that authorities had thwarted an attempted coup against his government. Security forces arrested Archbishop Bagrat Galstanyan of the Armenian Apostolic Church, accusing him of leading a conspiracy involving bombings, arson, roadblocks, and mobilising over 1,000 former soldiers and police. Another prominent Russian-Armenian businessman and a senior cleric were also detained. Prime Minister Pashinyan described the plot as a “criminal-oligarchic-clerical” plot.
Was Armenia’s coup real — a genuine organised domestic uprising? Or might it fall into a more opaque category — a theatrically staged coup or coup monté?
Was it like the Reichstag Fire of 1933, in which the German Parliament was torched and blamed on communists by the Nazis, paving the way for a crackdown? Or was it more akin to the 1953 Iranian coup, plotted, funded and stage-managed by the CIA and MI6 under the codename “Project Ajax” to overthrow a democratically elected, independent-minded prime minister in order to secure Western oil interests and install a pro-Western regime? And if the latter, are Russia’s fingers on the strings this time?
The evidence, as one would expect, is ambiguous.
There is widespread unease in Armenia with aspects of the government’s direction. Armenian identity has long been shaped by historical grievance with western neighbour Turkey for the events of 1915, and by a nationalist vision of a “Greater Armenia” beyond its internationally recognised borders. However, Pashinyan’s pragmatic “Real Armenia” agenda has challenged the latter.
For most of Armenia’s post-Soviet history, the now-opposition “True Armenia” faction appeared to hold the upper hand. It led to conflict and isolation. But, by their own account, this was a mark of national success. In the early 1990s, Armenian forces invaded the Karabakh region of their eastern neighbour Azerbaijan, driving 800,000 Azerbaijanis from their homes. What had been a diverse, multi-ethnic region was transformed into a small, mono-ethnic Armenian enclave, ruled as a self-declared “independent republic”.
Azerbaijan, along with its ally Turkey, closed its borders to Armenia. This had little impact on the much larger and globally integrated Turkish state or energy-rich Azerbaijan. But Armenia — tiny, landlocked, and isolated — was the principal victim of its own actions.
Armenia also faced multiple UN Security Council resolutions condemning the illegality of this occupation. Throughout, it was sustained by two powerful alliances: one to the north with its former colonial power, Russia; and one to the south with the anti-Turkish regime in Iran.
It was, and remains, a member of Russia’s Collective Security Treaty Organisation (CSTO), a mutual defence pact mirroring NATO, and hosted Moscow’s military bases on its soil. Russian interests also controlled Armenia’s power generation, rail network, and border security — engendering a confidence that Russia would come to Armenia’s aid if needed.
In 2020, Azerbaijan launched a military campaign to restore its sovereign territory. Moscow soon intervened to impose a ceasefire, halting the advance. However, following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in 2022, Azerbaijan sensed a window of opportunity — and succeeded in completing the task it had originally set out to do.
The Armenians’ sense of abandonment was profound, leading to a cooling of relations with Moscow. Pashinyan froze Armenia’s participation in the CSTO. Coincidentally, just two days after the recent alleged coup, an Armenian government minister announced that a “final decision” on membership was imminent.
Against this background, Armenia turned to Iran as its one remaining regional ally. But Iran already had its own problems: the fall of Assad in Syria marked a significant loss to the Islamic Republic’s influence, while its proxies were being decimated by Israeli strikes. Then came direct war with Israel and America.
With both patron states effectively out of the picture, Pashinyan made a bold move. On June 20th — just days before the alleged coup was thwarted — he travelled to Turkey to enter into direct dialogue with President Erdogan. His aim was to normalise relations with Turkey and pave the way for diplomatic and trade relations. Yet Ankara has repeatedly made clear it cannot proceed without a permanent peace agreement between Armenia and Azerbaijan.
It is a tough domestic sell for Pashinyan: not only conceding the end of “Greater Armenia” ambitions but shaking hands with a country whose identity as “The Enemy” is a cornerstone of Armenia’s sense of nationhood.
But power in the region has shifted significantly since the 1990s. At the time of independence from the Soviet Union, Armenia was the more organised state and dominant military power in the South Caucasus. It had been prioritised under Soviet rule and considered brotherly by Russia’s Soviets, while Azerbaijan was treated as a source of fossil fuels and its people as subjects.
In the generation since its early 1990s military defeat, that imbalance has reversed. Azerbaijan has emerged as an economic and military power, its population has grown to more than three times that of Armenia (which has shrunk due to mass emigration), and it has integrated into the global economy, largely through its fossil fuel sector, with significant investment from British oil giant BP.
Recognising these realities — and the resulting need to engage economically with both Azerbaijan and Turkey in the absence of effective patron states — is the true meaning of Pashinyan’s “Real Armenia” doctrine.
The fact that the alleged coup was revealed just five days after his dialogue with Erdogan may be circumstantial evidence that this was a real uprising from within: that the proponents of “True Armenia” — for years a rallying cry backed by the powerful Armenian Church — decided that this was theirs, and their nation’s, moment of greatest peril.
It also suggests that, with parliamentary elections looming ahead — and with them Pashinyan’s proposal, if victorious, to hold a national referendum on removing Armenia’s extra-territorial claims from the constitution (another precondition of peace with Azerbaijan) — his opponents have lost faith in their chances of winning at the ballot box.
What is the evidence for other explanations? Could this have been a Reichstag-style operation, a coup monté, in which Pashinyan’s government clandestinely encouraged, and simultaneously undermined, a plot that demonises and marginalises the forces of reaction? That seems unlikely. In a small country where everyone knows everyone else’s business, the risk of such a plot backfiring is acute.
Far more plausible is the idea that … recent events in Armenia bear the fingerprints of foreign powers
Far more plausible is the idea that, like the CIA/MI6 “Project Ajax” coup in Iran, recent events in Armenia bear the fingerprints of foreign powers. Moscow clearly sees its interests in the South Caucasus threatened by Pashinyan’s current direction. It would not be a good look for the Kremlin: at a time when NATO is expanding its membership and defence spending, a long-standing member of its own military alliance quits. Normalisation of the South Caucasus region leaves less slack for Russian military, economic and diplomatic string-pulling in its ‘near abroad’. Significantly, the Russian Orthodox Church, spiritually and politically deeply aligned with the Armenian Orthodox Church, is horrified by the potential sidelining of clerical influence and the marginalisation of the church-backed nationalist narrative in Armenia.
The truth seems likely to lie in a somewhat grey area, part-genuine domestic uprising, part-Kremlin destabilization play. After all, the newly elected pro-Moscow opposition Mayor of Armenia’s second largest city, home since 1941 to a permanent major Russian military base, has openly called for the creation of a single “Union State” combining Russia and Armenia (a call rewarded with Russian troop numbers being increased at Gyumri station, even under the strain of its war in Ukraine).
Investigations currently underway by the Yerevan authorities may yet bring new evidence for one — or both — of these theories to light. But the calculus for Armenia remains unchanged: the guarantor of its future prosperity and security lies not in the patronage of Russia, Iran, or even Europe, but in economic and diplomatic cooperation with its two Turkic neighbours.
