Warning: This is a rush transcript generated automatically and may contain errors.
Asbed: Hello everyone, this is Groong’s Week in Review for May 2, 2026. It’s just Hovik and I this week. And our topics are the Iran War, the Azeri Deputy Prime Minister Mustafayev’s visits to Armenia, the destruction of the Stepanakert Cathedral by Azerbaijan, and election politics, including a new MPG poll, the European political community, which essentially people are arriving today. I saw dozens of articles, photo ops at the airport and other places, and eroding freedom of speech in Armenia and more.
Hovik: Yeah. And before we start, just a quick reminder, please LIKE, COMMENT, SHARE. It really helps us increase our reach. So if you haven’t yet, just do that now so that you’ll be done with it.
All right. Shall we begin us a bit?
Asbed: Let’s start with our first topic, the Iran War. The U.S.-Iran talks in Islamabad did not really yield any tangible results. Iran offered a path of de-escalation. They said, stop the war, lift the naval blockade, and in exchange, we’ll reopen the Strait of Hormuz, further issues TBD later.
Well, that failed. But suddenly over this weekend, I think it was on Saturday, Trump unilaterally declared that he has terminated hostilities with Iran.
Hovik: I mean, I think this is more related to internal US politics than anything else. But what are your thoughts on this?
Asbed: Yeah, yeah, I think it has less to do with Iran. And it has a little more to do with the local domestic politics, because one thing is for sure, the War is very unpopular here in the US and for many reasons, and we don’t need to go into all of them here. But as the war has dragged on, it has seriously hurt Republican chances in the November midterm elections here. Also, Democrats and some Republicans even are threatening Trump with the War Powers Act.
This is because Trump dragged us into a war that he didn’t go to Congress, he didn’t get authorization. etc. So this declaration is essentially Trump’s way to try to defuse that crisis for himself. But guess what, Hovik? Democrats are now saying that the naval blockade of the Iranian ports itself is hostilities and Republicans are saying, well, that’s not so.
So U.S. politics goes on and on as usual while the rest of the world suffers fear, uncertainty, doubt, bombs, whatever.
Hovik: It would be interesting to see if Trump restarts the hostilities, but you know it’s rich coming from Democrats who have been funding and arming Ukraine all these years to get Russia into a war with Ukraine, to be now saying that the naval blockade constitutes hostilities, even though I agree with that statement. Yeah, absolutely.
Asbed: I mean, the United States needs to understand it’s a two way street. If they’re going to poke the bear in one corner, they’re going to be poked in another corner because we already know that some of the discussions between Putin and Trump have been about whittling and dealing, making agreements between Ukraine and Iran. You do this here for us and we’ll do that there for you. There’s no 100 percent win.
Both sides are going to have to take something. Yeah, that’s right. It’s a system. And since Trump declared an open-ended 60-day ceasefire, he has discovered, by the way, that the US allies are not interested in joining this war.
And he heard this even from their closest ally, the UK, this past week when King Charles was in DC. Meanwhile, Iran doesn’t want a 60-day ceasefire. They’ve said that they should be able to reach any kind of an agreement in 30 days or less. And if hostilities resume, they are ready to start sinking warships.
And I think this has taken away some, it’s put a real damper on Trump’s appetite for more war.
Hovik: Honestly, I’m going to be very cynical here and say that Trump’s appetite for war really doesn’t matter when it comes to these kinds of things. I think there is a Well, I mean, we know that Israel has been yanking the chain. And it’s not just Israel. It’s the military industrial complex, military industrial congressional complex, and even the media.
It seems very difficult for Trump to unilaterally now Say that okay we’re not going to war that’s what my fear is any one of these could throw a monkey wrench in the process so let’s say even if Trump was not a criminal or whatever and he had the best you know he had good will towards ending this war Israel could just sort of throw a monkey wrench and many of the I think lobbies that control the Congress Could also do it, but…
Asbed: I mean, what you’re saying about the military industrial complex, you’re 100% right, because even though there’s a ceasefire right now, don’t get us wrong, the U.S. is reloading. They’ve just enacted the Emergency Powers Act and they allocated just a little under $9 billion to send arms immediately to Israel and a bunch of Gulf states. Well, the military industrial complex is happy. and continuing its work. You know, Iran has offered a nine point plan, which Trump’s team really does not like, but they are supposedly reviewing.
I think this is as of today. So maybe some negotiations will move forward either officially or through back channels. I think Trump actually is caught between continuing a very unpopular war. Neither the allies nor the domestic public really here wants it or having to make some kind of a bad deal or a deal that he doesn’t like.
Hovik: Okay, so this is a ball in your court. I’m not following U.S. elections very closely. So how is this going to affect U.S. midterms?
Asbed: I’m pretty sure that Congress right now looks to me like it’s flipping Democrat, but I’m not sure about the Senate. So we’re just going to have to keep watching and see how things progress from there. That’s it. Well, we’ll just keep watching.
Hovik: Yeah. All right, let’s go to Armenia. But before that, I just want to mention that despite the so-called ceasefire, and also there is supposed to be a ceasefire in Lebanon, Israel has been continuing relentless, ruthless daily operations, including bombing of towns and villages. Entire villages are being razed in Lebanon.
And it’s easy to forget this amidst all this storm of news and from various angles. Thanks for bringing that forward, Hovik.
Asbed: I forgot to mention it. Just today, Israel just gave evacuation notice to over a dozen Lebanese villages. They just want people to up and leave their homes and their villages.
Hovik: And in just one day, just yesterday, they killed 13 people. including two women many more injured so the actual the real war in the Middle East is still going on and it’s just taking different shapes and so far I don’t see any intention by Israel at least to stop with this plans I don’t you know I don’t link it to internal Israeli politics more than I don’t think you know I think any leader in Israel is going to be motivated to continue the war. Maybe in different levels of motivation, but I don’t see a real peace movement in Israel, which is, I think, critical for any peace in the Middle East.
Asbed: Yeah, I saw a news item over the weekend that Ben Gvir, who is like an extremist in the government, he had his 50th birthday and somebody had given him a cake with a noose on it. As the cake decoration and you know that news is basically relating to the hanging or the killing of Palestinians who apparently have been accused of killing Israelis, etc. Well, I was hoping there’s no peace movement. There’s nothing going on over there from that end.
Hovik: Yeah. All right. Coming to our neck of the woods. On April 29th was International Dance Day.
Why are we talking about dance? Well Armenia normally celebrates this day with massive street performances. Schools, dance groups, everyone sort of participates.
So while the children and the young people are dancing in various squares in Yerevan, and really across the country a significant geopolitical event took place and this is why we call this segment Operation Kochari and this event was not announced Armenians first got a hint that something was going on when they saw a big Azerbaijani jet on the runway at Zvartnots and only through Azerbaijani media did we later learn that this was a visit by Deputy Prime Minister of Azerbaijan Shahin Mustafayev with a very large delegation it appears and this is the highest ranking Azerbaijani official to visit Armenia since 1990 and the Azeri side only reported that border delimitations were being discussed but given the size of this delegation and given the secrecy around it I think that a lot more was on the table
Asbed: Well, even on the Armenian side, Hovik, I think there was a large delegation of so-called businessmen and oligarchs who are essentially either ramping up trade with Azerbaijan or being told to ramp up their trade with Azerbaijan as they lose business in Russia.
Hovik: Yeah, I mean pliable oligarchs, some of them of course are hardcore Pashinyan fanatics, such as Khachatur Sukyasyan’s people, Grzo is his name, and he’s Nikko’s favorite oligarch. But there are also oligarchs who essentially will do the dictates of any leader of Armenia. I think Samvel Aleksanyan is one of them.
But we really don’t know the full scope of the delegation, and honestly I don’t really know Pashinyan has been making a point that Armenia will expedite the demarcation of the border areas that are through which the TRIPP will pass so once again violating the previously agreed order in which the border will be demarcated I think from north to south this would be it would be ideal for Armenia to begin from south to north because many areas in the south are under Azerbaijani occupation but they’re going to make an exception they’re just going to demarcate the border areas that are through which triple pass and then they will just go back to north south So Azerbaijan, you know, gains maximum leverage here as well.
Right.
Asbed: Well, so would you call that this is trade that’s ramping up with between Armenia and Azerbaijan, because you and I were talking with Hrair Balian just a couple of days ago, and we’re going to be publishing that show today. And he was saying this is at best a either a gesture of goodwill so that Armenia can continue its transition from a north south relationship to an east west relationship or basically a bit of a PR stunt.
Hovik: Look, there was a very very lengthy meeting between Pashinyan and Aliyev in Abu Dhabi earlier I think last year maybe and I think that a lot of things were on the table many things that are going to be very very bad for Armenia and they for five I don’t know what they discussed for five hours but during those I think there’s enough material that would put in front of Armenia as a capitulant country to implement that this is probably Now the time to check up on the status and see which things can be implemented before the elections and then also they’re probably planning after the elections because many things Pashinyan does will not be announced right now but if the stated goal, one of the stated reasons is business, right?
I mean there’s zero things that Armenia exports to Azerbaijan and there is zero potential for Armenia to export things to Azerbaijan because we don’t produce food we don’t produce grain the economy under Pashinyan has become even more consumer oriented meanwhile we saw like announcements that I think we imported a million dollars worth of their grain and oil but in the large sea of in things that Armenia imports in terms of energy and food even Azerbaijan cannot provide that like the the oil from Azerbaijan Azerbaijan does not produce enough petroleum products which is actually what really Armenia imported especially refined products yeah so that comes from Russia through Azerbaijan and it’s being labeled as Azerbaijani the grain is coming from Kazakhstan so it’s a psyop it’s essentially a psyop to uh make Armenians think okay well now there’s peace and now there’s trade and it’s even Azerbaijan that is being the good will actor meanwhile all of this stuff is coming not from the border between Armenia and Azerbaijan we have direct border between Armenia and Azerbaijan it’s coming through Georgia right and the Georgians are enabling this by charging very low duty on all of this stuff that’s going to Georgia so…
We’re not even seeing real trade between Armenia and Azerbaijan. It all goes funneled through Georgia. And if it goes to Georgia, then it could have come to Russia. So no real value other than PR value.
Asbed: Well, I mean, if there’s real peace, why don’t they enable a railway between Azerbaijan and Armenia?
Hovik: Well, yeah, and they’re saying they don’t need to.
Asbed: They’re two contiguous countries with a thousand kilometer border. Why do they have to go through any third country to do trade?
Hovik: Yeah. And the plan is to enable TRIPP, which they’ll say, that’s your railway. But as we said, most of Armenia’s trade is with Iran and Russia. The TRIPP, as it stands, if it doesn’t link to other rail systems in Azerbaijan that would allow unfettered access for Armenians to send stuff south to Iran and send stuff north to Russia, if that doesn’t exist and it doesn’t even seem to be on the plans, then we’re talking about just more dependence on Azerbaijan if TRIPP comes along.
Asbed: You said that Armenia exports nothing to Azerbaijan. I think I read an article that we exported $980 worth of stuff to Azerbaijan during these trades. It’s kind of funny, under $1,000. But I’m sure that’ll grow if this whole resilience psyop continues.
There is a question that I want to ask, though. We’ve heard a whole bunch about Shahin Mustafayev. Who is he?
Hovik: That’s an interesting point. So Shahin Mustafayev is actually a Deputy Prime Minister of Azerbaijan and he was born in Armenia actually in the Davos region in the village of Jujevan and according to various reports he speaks fluent Armenian. He graduated high school in Armenia during the Soviet times. He actually graduated Armenian I think University of Economics with flying colors now I don’t know if that’s you know inflated essentially he’s he’s a perfect man for Aliyev to own the Armenia portfolio essentially we are he’s basically the shadow prime minister of Armenia he tells Pashinyan what to do and Pashinyan tells Armenians what to do
Asbed: Okay, so he comes to Armenia. What’s the big deal if there is peace? Why was his visit kept secret? Why all the dancing?
Hovik: Well, because he knows that at the minimum, the opposition would state some protests. More than 95% of the people, according to various posts, Say that Azerbaijan is their enemy. So all these psyops are meant to chip away at that number, but it’s not going to happen. And people, as long as there are some people with dignity.
So it was essentially kept secret and timed to coincide on this dance festival day in order to minimize the chances that any opposition group would protest.
Asbed: So you think actually they picked that day on purpose?
Hovik: I would bet my money on it, but yeah, I mean, it’s not like this. They probably also tried to enhance or augment the activities on that day to make this year’s Dance Fest activities more robust. It was pretty huge. Yeah, you can see the…
I think thousands of people like participating so they had to all this has to be coordinated right yeah and yeah so they is someone is sitting in Pashinyan’s cabinet thinking of different dates that they can use for these humiliating meetings so that you know to minimize the PR minimize the effects on the ground from that from those visits and and and the actual meetings took place in Far away towns secluded and heavily armed security presence. So even people in the regions where these meetings were happening couldn’t even approach the places where these meetings were being held.
Asbed: Well, okay. Pretty sure that our listeners have heard about the destruction of the Armenian Cathedral in Stepanakert. Surp Astvatsamor was bulldozed, erased. And of course, the Armenian opposition condemned it and complained to the international community.
The Armenian Church condemned it and complained, satellite photos confirmed it, the Azerbaijani government confirmed it a day later, and the former chair of the U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom condemned it and called it a cultural genocide after the ethnic cleansing of 120,000 people. I could go on and on about this, but Hovik, I’m going to let you tell us how Pashinyan’s government stood up and defended our Armenian culture, religion and monuments, right?
Hovik: Before I do that, I want to mention that you listed the entities or organizations that condemned it. In terms of countries, only I think the foreign ministry of Russia truly condemned this at a press conference.
Now last, I believe a week or a few weeks ago, the European Parliament also condemned it or condemned destruction of Armenian cultural artifacts but it was in a bill that was supposed to support Pashinyan and it was this bill that also condemned Russian hybrid war and somehow this language about Azerbaijani destruction of Armenian cultural sites in Artsakh also someone slid that in And I think that whoever on the Pashinyan team was supposed to ensure this doesn’t happen will get fired because we know that Pashinyan, you know, would not have done it. But I think what’s even more important is who didn’t condemn it, right?
I mean, all these countries that profess to be for human rights, for dignity and so forth, All of them were silent, including Macron, France, Germany. Despite the European Parliament passing that resolution, we know that on the ground it has very little correlation, I would say, to EU foreign policy, especially on things like the Armenian-Azerbaijan conflict.
Armenia still has some friends in the European Parliament, but in terms of the executive decision-making in Europe, it gets done at the European Commission so Macron, von der Leyen all those people remained silent but that didn’t stop Azerbaijan from essentially terminating its relations with the European Parliament they vociferously rejected these claims I don’t know which one they rejected or maybe they rejected they said we were right but you shouldn’t talk about it And as a result, now I think Azerbaijan has terminated its relationship with the European Parliament. I don’t know what that means.
Asbed: I think they’ve done that before and then silently it restarts.
Hovik: I think that was the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe, but I think this may be a net new, but yeah, it’s just for sure. Same thing. Yeah. But what is interesting is that European officials, the TRIPP by European officials to Azerbaijan to Declare Fealty to the dictator in Baku and to say that you know to assure them that European and Azerbaijani relations are at a strategic strategic level that won’t stop and probably someone from The European Commission will go to Baku again, apologize, crawl on their knees, and I don’t know what else they will do, maybe lick some shoes, and maybe Aliyev will forgive them.
I don’t mean to inflate Aliyev’s influence, but this is the Europe that we’re dealing with, and many of these people are now going to be in Armenia, placating Pashinyan this coming week. Now, coming to Armenia, one of the Pashinyan regime people who spoke was Arsene Torosyan, a member of parliament. And he questioned why Armenia should even be involved. He said, let’s say we did that.
What would it give Armenia and its citizens? My answer is, how about dignity? The understanding that the Armenian government still cares for Armenian heritage, Armenian, you know, Christian heritage. Now, if you think Torosyan’s statement was bad, Hashinian directly jumped in, and he explained it by what-about-ism.
He said, let’s say we get some land back from Azerbaijan, Artsvashen. I even doubt that will happen, but let’s say Artsvashen is a small enclave, that is currently in Azerbaijan. That’s the only enclave. And he said, if we get that back and we see that the Azerbaijanis have built some big mosques, wouldn’t we react the same way?
And honestly, I think that most of the population in Artsvashen was Armenian before 1990, and most of the population in Stepanakert was Armenian Before 1990, after 1990, all the way up to 2023, and the church was essentially, it was built during modern times, even though Azerbaijan has destroyed other churches, more historic churches, this one was built in the modern times, so that was the official pretense by Aliyev that, hey, this was done under illegal occupation, so we’re going to destroy it, but it was done for the people who lived there on the ground who had roots there and the Armenian government I mean I think nothing shocks us anymore but for outsiders to understand the Armenian government directly is condoning the erasure of Christian artifacts and declaring that they will not even stand up for it
Asbed: Yeah. Well, what do you expect from a government that erases postings about the Armenian Church’s commemoration of the Armenian Genocide on April 24? Yeah. This is what you can expect from them.
And I want to tell you, I mean, you just mentioned a little bit about what the Aliyev government is doing, but I do want to say just a little more on this. They’ve doubled down and they’re defending that they have a moral and legal ground to destroy These Armenian churches because it was supposedly an illegal building by occupying forces and I call bullshit on that. Okay, because first of all, the Armenians of Artsakh were not an occupying force. They’re natives of the land and their buildings and their culture.
The roots are in Artsakh. These are not people who migrated from Yerevan or anywhere else. These are people who’ve lived there for thousands of years. And this is, I believe, just a very legalistic mumbo jumbo to pretend that the cultural and ethnic cleansing that they’re perpetrating in Nagorno-Karabakh is somehow justified.
They’re just doing this to pacify the Europeans into inaction. Basically here, you know, go consume your gas and shut the fuck up. We don’t need your opinion and the Europeans are very happy to just consume the gas and move on. Second, I guess I’ll just go on a little bit of a rant.
What galls me the most is that when Pashinyan recognized Artsakh as a part of Azeri territory back in October of 2022. He and his national security dweebs did not think of the consequences. And now they’re trying to basically apologize for it. They were motivated by immediate needs.
They just want to keep power. They want to stave off more attacks because they had no idea how to defend our borders. These people, they’re still in power and they are not good thinkers. And maybe they had a plan back in 2018, but they no longer know how to behave.
They no longer know how to negotiate. It’s like the old Mike Tyson saying, everyone has a plan until they get punched in the mouth, you know? And that’s what happened in the 44-Day War. And since then, all they can do is apologize for whatever Aliyev wants to do.
If the buildings are destroyed, they say, Oh, well, it’s their territory. Of course, they recognize it as their territory, but they never thought that all of our monuments were going to be destroyed. So now all they know is how to get together with a bunch of Europeans and make their little heart signs while the Europeans laugh at them behind their backs.
Hovik: Yeah. The only thing I would disagree with is that they never thought what would happen. I think they had a very good idea of what would happen. We’ve discussed the war many times.
It’s not like Armenia was completely overpowered. Pashinyan stopped mobilization. So I would disagree that this is legal because there is international law and human rights. So yes, it’s legalistic, but it is completely illegal.
And Pashinyan is essentially taking responsibility as a co-conspirator in this cultural genocide.
Because if it’s a genocide and There are 150,000 Armenians in Yerevan today and throughout Armenia that proved that this was an ethnic cleansing and a genocidal act then it is a responsibility of any country to prevent this genocide from happening including the most Armenian country in the world Armenia and for this you know I would you know I find very difficult Thinking what will happen after the elections you know some parties are promising amnesty just to make sure there’s like the social solidarity or whatever, I think that people have to pay people have to pay for their crimes and this was a crime of.
Proportions that, unfortunately, I haven’t seen when you consider countries doing this with their own co-nationals, when an Armenian government does this with their own hands. I haven’t seen an example of it.
Asbed: I don’t think you and I disagree. Probably on this show, we don’t have time to re-litigate whether in 2018 they had other plans or they came with the plans to give up Karabakh. I know We’ve talked about this ad infinitum, and the thing is that I actually kind of agree with you, so we should just move on from that. Seriously, and I’m going to leave this in the show.
Hovik: They’re not idiots, they’re traitors. Just remember.
Asbed: Let’s go to elections, Hovik. It’s tis the season for the polls. Sociological polls galore. Every week there’s probably one or two until the elections happen.
So what’s new this week?
Hovik: Well, a new MPG poll was released and we will discuss that. For those following, make sure if you want to watch the video version, you will see some slides of what we’re talking about. but this new mpg poll was conducted between April 27th and April 29th so that’s actually pretty good window right you know we don’t you don’t want to do it over a whole month like some other polls have done because a lot of things happen during that month that could sway the results so this is a good point in time snapshot of public sentiment and the error margin is three percent again it’s similar to all the previous MPG polls that we’re discussing.
Asbed: One of the… I think that’s a methodology thing, right? As when you go over a thousand respondents, you’re pretty much going in the two and a half to 3% error margin.
Hovik: Yeah. I mean, it’s a probability theory. They have some weird calculations and it doesn’t matter. You only need a thousand to talk to a thousand people as long as it’s random. and then you will have a pretty good estimate of the entire population but they also make sure that it’s proportional to the population balance you know if the females I think in Armenia are 55% and males are 49% or something they will make sure that all of those the social groups are in the dataset and it’s balanced, including whether people live in regions or whether people are living in Erdogan.
So as long as they hit their targets for those population segments, then the poll can be considered accurate from that perspective. Anyway, One of the, I think, let’s start with the most boring slide, but it’s probably also very interesting. It asks where people get their information. Asped, do you want to take it from there?
Asbed: Well, it’s one of the pet peeves that I have that Armenians seem to get their information from Facebook. And this poll actually puts kind of a number on it. And it is, let’s look, 16 plus 47. About 63% of people want to get the information from Facebook.
And I find that appalling, to be honest. Go to real newspapers, Maybe your television, whatever, but people seem to be glued to their Facebook streams. They like to get it from their streams and also Facebook Lives, I guess.
Hovik: Yeah, yeah, and we will show the full slides, but it is just, I think, this is just to underscore, I think, a statement that we’ve said before, this is just to underscore a point that we have brought before, is that the information space is a very important part of modern hybrid warfare.
Asbed: Facebook could shut down Armenia, Hovik. Facebook could shut down the Armenian government, could shut down Armenia, basically make it incapable of operating.
Hovik: And it’s not just say Facebook, it says social media and Facebook. And what’s interesting is that all the social media that Armenians follow, which is Facebook, Instagram, they’re all controlled by U.S. entities.
And there was evidence that, you know, so this Daniel Ioannisyan guy, he complained he filed a complaint to YouTube and backed by several US congressmen and YouTube deleted three major channels now I don’t know how reputable those channels were but they were all opposition meanwhile all these eight years since Pashinyan came along and even before there are a litany of channels that promote fake news about Armenia from a European and anti-Russian perspective And I’m sure all those channels were untouched, especially this perfect TV channel, I’m not sure if that still exists, but when I was monitoring it, at one point all these fake news were accounting for 30% of the view count of Armenian content and then when you take into account that another 30% are government controlled or pro-Pashinian media and international media financed by the US military industrial complex a good 70% of the media that Armenians consume is going to be tainted by pro-Western narratives and anti-Russian narratives, not pro-Armenian narratives.
And that’s why it’s important for any future government, in my opinion, to take control of the information space.
Asbed: It’s interesting that you mentioned Perfect TV. I haven’t seen it recently. It’s been over a year, maybe two years. I’m sure it’s there, but it was garbage.
It was like the Armenian Enquirer.
Hovik: Yeah, basically said that Erdogan is on his knees begging Pashinyan not to attack, things like that. But there are hundreds of perfect TVs out there. And under this veil of hybrid warfare, they are targeting opposition media, or maybe perfect TV versions of the opposition media, but is definitely geared towards silencing the opposition, not establishing a level playing field at all.
Asbed: Hovik, let’s dig into the meat of the matter because one of the things that we have been concerned about is participation in this election and we have talked in the past with some experts who believe that the higher level participation in these elections will probably favor the opposition. What are we seeing in the poll about this?
Hovik: So the intent to participate is increasing from poll to poll and now when they asked will you participate in the elections if they were held on Sunday 70.7% so around 71% said they would participate around 18.2% outright said they won’t participate so both the number of people who said they would participate rose from 10 point from 60.5% to 70.7%. So that’s a 10% rise. But also, the people who said they won’t participate, that also rose from 10% or somewhere around 10% to somewhere around 14% or 15%. So that’s a 4% or 5% jump.
Asbed: So that tells me that the number of undecided must have gone down significantly. Because there was a very large contingent of 25 to 30% of people who basically were undecided, did not, were not interested in participating, etc.
Hovik: Yeah. Yeah. And the key to our position is going to be to make sure that these 70% who said, or 71% who said they would show up to vote, actually do show up to vote. Because the higher that number, the lower the chances of Pashinyan for attaining his goals.
In reality, the real turnout will be much less than this, because people always overstate their intentions when asked, so it remains to be seen whether the opposition can mobilize. I think a critical component that needs to be street protests even leading up to the elections, the street movement, and I’m not seeing that.
Asbed: I guess there’s a slide about that also that gauges that level of, we’ll call it active participation or activism, but let’s get to that in just a second. So what are these people, 70% of the population that is interested in participating? Who would they vote for if the elections were this weekend? Well, today, actually, because today is Sunday, May 2nd.
Hovik: Well, I mean, yeah, it’s a hypothetical weekend. It was actually the Sunday following the April 27th when they conducted the poll. But according to this, only five parties would clear the threshold. Civil Contract at 26.7%, that’s a 2% bump.
Strong Armenia at 14.1%, that is a 1% bump. Armenia Alliance at 8.2%, that is a 3% bump. Prosperous Armenia, which is Gagev Tzabrukian’s party, so that’s around 8%, it remains the same. And then Wings of Unity at 4.2%, which is a strong bump.
Previous polls indicated that they had like between one and two percent. So Wings of Unity got a strong bump, despite Avetik Chalabyan’s Hayakve organization leaving that alliance. And now they’re not going to be an alliance. They’re going to be running as a party.
Asbed: And lastly… Well, I think Hayakve has joined Strong Armenia, I believe.
Hovik: They are going to be supporting Strong Armenia, but I don’t think they will be represented on the list, Strong Armenia list. So they will be supporting, essentially, and maybe eventually they’ll get some government appointments. But right now, yeah, just like Jarangutyun, which is…
Asbed: Raffi Hovannisian’s Heritage.
Hovik: Yeah, Raffi Hovannisian’s party. The last party that I think would clear the threshold potentially is DOK. you know internet personality who curses a lot and who is in jail by the way yeah I confirmed he’s in jail still they got like three percent but it’s important to say these are like the polls you can actually do some math and scale you remove the people who wouldn’t clear the threshold and recalculate and scale these numbers. And then you actually have probably achieved something closer to the real numbers that would happen. So Pashinyan’s 26.7% gets inflated.
Asbed: We can put these tables in the show notes, but doing the math, and you can look up the show notes if you’re interested, or maybe it can be in the video. Civil Contract at 26.7%. If I do a little bit of math here with Strong Armenia, Armenia Alliance and Prosperous Armenia, they add up to maybe 29.9% or 30% of the vote, which is kind of interesting. Wings of Unity has 4.2%.
If they join, which I’m not sure they would or they would not, but hopefully they would. On the other hand, the DOK Party and Bright Armenia, I would think that I don’t know what to say about them. I think that they are not completely close to alliances with civil contract, even though they say they’re not going to do that. So it’s extremely close if these people actually come to an alliance.
So Hovik, all these poll numbers and everything, if you were to convert them into mandates, what would they translate to?
Hovik: Yeah, so I’m not a sociologist, so I don’t know if my spreadsheet calculation is correct, but I’m going to take the risk and state something anyway. So first, I mean, the raw poll results need to be converted into, you know, need to be analyzed by taking into account that the decided factor, right?
So if only the people who stated that they would vote for one party or another not the ones that said I will spoil the ballot I won’t participate I don’t know but if only those people voted in the elections then you can scale the numbers so the share among the decides would convert to so Pashinyan’s or Civil Contracts 26.7% would convert to 34.7% for Civil Contract and then 18.3% for Strong Armenia Armenia Alliance would be at 10.7%. Prosperous Armenia would be at 9.8%. Wings of Unity would be at 5.5%. And DOK would be at 4.0%.
So they would actually clear the threshold if scaled and accounted for the decided or undecided factor.
Asbed: Can I remind one thing? When Dock got into the Yerevan City Council, They played kingmaker there. And essentially what they did was, I don’t know if I can say they flipped, but they essentially made civil contract the Grand Avignon king of Yerevan.
Hovik: Yeah, several members defected.
I’m not sure if this time it will be the same Vartan Ghukasyan who is in jail, whose actually participation in the elections was officially disqualified by the Central Electoral Commission overnight. he has stated that things would not repeat but yes Dock actually so if Dock clears the threshold then they can play kingmaker in Armenia assuming that Pashinyan gets a big bump in May which they might because of all these European stunts and the extra coalition from DOK could give Pashinyan the majority although not a constitutional majority which he wants but so further from that like I also did a calculation where okay now that we calculated the share among the decided I figured out the ones that could clear the threshold and then if that is the basis for assigning mandates The makeup of the mandate count would be Civil Contract would eventually have 42 mandates, which is about 41.6% of the mandates, the initial mandate count.
Based on the initial mandate count, civil contract would have 41.6%, Strong Armenia would have 21.8%. 12.9% will be given to Armenia Alliance, Prosperous Armenia would have 11.9% and Wings of Unity would have 6.9% and Dog would have 5% so just by these numbers I think it’s less likely now than in the Yerevan elections in 2023 but if DOC and civil contract formed a coalition they would have a total of 46.6% now and if Pashinyan gets an extra 10% or 5-10% in a bump in ratings in May then Pashinyan will be able to have a majority in parliament, although it will be a very rancorous, and I’m not sure what would happen then.
Asbed: Yeah, where do you put Bright Armenia’s chances in all this? They have 2.7% in the polls. This is Edmon Marukyan’s group. This is Edmon Marukyan’s group.
Hovik: Yeah, with my calculation, with the scaled calculation, even then they have 3.5%, so they’re close. But I think that if Pashinyan gets a bump in May, many of those votes will be from other sympathetic parties and I would consider Bright Armenia a part of that.
So it’s difficult for Bright Armenia to Get into Parliament but that’s another thing that we need to watch out for if they do some kind of mass mobilization in May and they also get a slight bump then bright Armenia could also enter the Parliament in which case yeah I mean things look things will look much different but there will be a lot of polls between now and I mean there there’ll be at least a few more posts between now and June 7th so
Asbed: we’ll we’ll monitor those but and just to put into context the whole week the 41.6% that you gave civil contract that translates to an apartment of 130 it translates to about whatever 50 ish I’d have to do some math Mandates or yeah and to put it in context with a supermajority or a constitutional majority as they’re calling it is 70 or 71 MPs in Parliament yeah so the the total
Hovik: mandate count is not fixed the initial mandates are only 101 last what happened in 2021 was only two parties cleared the threshold and by law the Republican Party also had to be included so they gave extra mandates to Baty Vunem by inflating the total mandate count so the principle is whoever earns the mandates they get to keep their mandates but then Pashinyan’s percentage was adjusted to account for that so that’s why the total number of mandates inflated to 130 or whatever.
What will happen most likely this time is there will be at least three parties that clear the threshold, which means that we’ll have closer to like 105 or 106 mandates in parliament. And with that, yes, Pashinyan will have like 40 something, 44, 45 mandates. So Dok can play kingmaker if bright Armenian makes the parliament, they can play kingmaker.
Asbed: From what I hear… Or even prosperous Armenia could play kingmaker.
Hovik: Yeah, that’s less likely, but I would say even bright Armenia, I mean, even Edmon Marukyan, who shares his guilt in collaborating with Pashinyan for a long time after the 2020 capitulation. Even then, I mean, some of the people that are on his list are Hardcore against Pashinyan. I don’t see how they would form a coalition with Pashinyan, but it remains to be seen.
Asbed: But I also think that prosperous Armenia can be reasonable. I think this situation kind of calls for them to ally with Strong Armenia, Samvel Karapetyan, rather than their feudal enmity between Robert Kocharyan and Gagik Tsarukyan. I think that Karapetyan offers an opportunity to form this alliance by closing or holding their noses or closing their eyes, whatever it is, and just saying, okay.
Hovik: Some people in the opposition, I think Gagik Tsarukyan, they don’t I mean, he commands a strong following in the regions, especially Kotayk, where he is from. But, you know, given that for two years they collaborated with Pashinyan from 2018, one has asked questions why they did that. I hope that it’s not related to Kompromat.
As much as I hate to say it, I think some people in the opposition have this sense of fear or trepidation that somehow Gagik Tsarukyan may act as a spoiler but remains to be seen but yes he has declared that he will form a coalition with Strong Armenia but as long as none of the formers are elected as prime minister and he explicitly mentioned Robert Kocharyan as he doesn’t want to see Robert Kocharyan as a prime minister
Asbed: I don’t see Robert Kocharyan as a prime minister if Samvel Karapetyan’s party is actually the primary vote winner.
Hovik: We can talk more about that.
Asbed: We’re talking about the level of trust about the CEC. Let’s just flip that. Can the MPG poll be trusted?
Hovik: Look, I mean, we talked about this in various times in the past, and I honestly believe that, yeah, the polling in Armenia is generally done okay. What happens is that the time that they’re done, you know, even let’s say how you introduce yourself, how you What accent you use when talking to people can sway the results. So if you say I’m from the American polling organization, people will probably answer differently and some people won’t answer at all.
I think this is accounting for the difference between the 2021 polls and the 2021 actual results but also the 2021 results were in my opinion manipulated by the government there were various cases of irregularities so that needs to be taken into account but there are other polls that show that Pacino will get a big win One of those polls is EVN Report. Are they correct? Or this organization is Armenian Election Study, AES or AFES, I forget. This is Kopalyan poll, right?
And one number from that poll really stands out glaring. They actually predicted that 89% of people would turn out to vote. How do you Assuming that they haven’t engaged in any use of banned narcotics, how would you come up with that number? I think one plausible explanation is you call them and the people that respond are the people that you want.
Anti-Pashinyan people didn’t respond. And how could that be? Well, if you say that I’m from the University of Las Vegas and you talk with a US accent or another native accent, I’m not sure who conducted these polls, but I highly doubt that 89% of people would say that they would participate. I’m glad for that, but it’s in stark contrast to the MPG poll.
And even then, if higher people participate, then that’s better for the opposition. So they predicted almost 90% turnout and then a huge victory for Pashinyan, which is against all the logic that I’m seeing.
Asbed: Well, there are some interesting numbers we should discuss. What if the results are faked? This is a slide and I want you to talk about the percentages of people that feel that the elections are going to be free and fair or they’re going to be faked and also how prepared they are to take action if the elections are not free and fair.
Hovik: So the poll directly answers those questions. One of the questions asked was will the 2026 parliamentary election be fair or will there be falsifications or will it be falsified? The answer was 41% said yes there will be falsifications while 48% said no there won’t be falsifications and there will be fair elections.
Now they said if the elections are falsified will you protect your right to vote by participating in street actions 46.5% said yes they will participate in street actions and 49.3% said no so I would say that’s like 50-50 especially if you take into account the margin of error I think there is a strong appetite to remove Pashinyan and if the elections are falsified then I think there will be some kind of a street movement but I think the opposition is keeping that in their back pocket right now however going back to what I said before I don’t think that the street movement will be successful unless they start now so they need to start now they need to build up momentum until the day of the elections After which, if there’s falsifications and forgeries, then the people can hit the streets.
Asbed: Yeah, I think this would be a good time, especially since this week the European political community is in town. But, Jovi, as far as my reaction goes to those numbers where 46.5% said they will participate and 49-something percent said they won’t. Initially, when I looked at the numbers, I go, wow, that’s a lot of people who are not interested in defending Free elections in their country. They don’t want to do anything about it.
But the more I thought about that 50-50, actually 50% of the people saying they will do something about it is a very large number.
Hovik: Yeah.
Asbed: You think like one or two percent or five percent of the people are going to do something. Fifty percent of people saying they will take some kind of action, whatever that is. We don’t know that. We don’t know if that means they’re going to go down in the streets and scream and yell and demonstrate.
But 50 percent of the people saying they will do something is a large number.
Hovik: Yeah. And I think that 49 percent that said, no, they won’t do anything.
I think that’s conflated a little bit or confounded by the the people who said that the elections will be fair and essentially Pashinyan voters so a good 20-30% of that may also include Pashinyan voters even though the question directly asks if you believe the elections are if the elections are falsified will you hit the streets but I think a lot of people would simply answer no anyway to that so if the opposition is able to unseat Pashinyan they would have to do it through a coalition of all the other four parties and any one of those could break the coalition so Wings of Unity, Gagik Zarokyan’s party, Robert Kocheran’s party, and Salve Karapetian’s party and Wings of Unity have said they’re against formers and most likely I infer from that that they will not participate in a coalition that includes Robert Kocharyan as Prime Minister.
Gagik Tsarukyan said he will not form a coalition if it includes Robert Kocharyan as Prime Minister but then who’s going to be the Prime Minister because Strong Armenia is pushing Samvel Karapetyan but in order to do that the collective opposition would have to have a constitutional majority which is 66% plus and that is a very very hard sell right now based on these results. So… Essentially,
Asbed: they need two-thirds vote in the parliament to make the legal changes that are required to allow Samvel Karapetyan to become prime minister.
Hovik: So, barring that, if it’s not Robert Kocharyan, who I think is the other most charismatic person, who is going to be leading the country? You know, is it going to be Narek Karapetyan? It seems like that, because Strong Armenia basically would… Narek Karapetyan, Samvel Karapetyan’s nephew, is leading Strong Armenia right now.
And he would be the obvious candidate, but that, I think, leaves more room for leverage with the opposition. And honestly, I think that a strong charismatic leader is leading the country should not be underestimated.
Now, we can look at the Georgian example and say, okay, Bidzina Ivanishvili is not in parliament but he is effectively leading the country but I think that the leaders who actually lead nothing against Narek Karapetyan but I think he has a long career in politics if he wants to ahead of him but this is as a first as your first gig in politics becoming a prime minister solely based on the name of your uncle I I think that will not motivate people a lot. Let me just put it that way. So it remains to be seen. Now, obviously, the other opposition parties hate Kocharyan.
That is clear. And I don’t know whether that’s electioneering, whether they are doing that because Kocharyan’s…
Asbed: Are there any significant people on Hayastan Dashing that would be viable candidates as prime minister?
Hovik: I mean, I don’t think anyone of the same caliber, let’s say, as Samvel Karapetyan or Robert Kocharyan.
Asbed: Yes, there’s… What about the same caliber as Narek Karapetian?
Hovik: I mean, that’s what my point is. Narek Karapetian’s caliber, with all my respect, is not the same as Robert Kocharyan and Samvel Karapetyan. Honestly, my only hope is that the opposition will win more than 70%, or maybe another scenario where They win, they form a short-term coalition, and then six months down the road, the coalition breaks up because it will be an unstable coalition.
Asbed: I don’t see any- This is going to become the knessetization of the Armenian parliament.
Hovik: Or maybe by design, right? If the acting prime minister resigns twice, then it will trigger new elections, and this time it will be without Pashinyan in power. and the issue of administrative resources goes away and also if these new elections are held then Pashinyan will have zero chance of getting into parliament. I hate to see an Armenian parliament where Pashinyan will be an MP and will have the largest number of mandates of any single party even though they’re not a majority.
Asbed: So this past week we talked with Hrair Balian and Raffi Kalfayan. Neither of them are optimistic that there is a chance of free and fair elections coming up. What are your thoughts about what can happen when Well, let’s just give it a little bit of an opportunity to succeed if and when these elections are falsified. What’s next?
What does the opposition do?
Hovik: I think the only thing that opposition can do is raise their voices and do street protests. I think that unlike 2021, there is no longer an opportunity to say, yes, I will join the parliament, but I will work from the inside to change the system.
So no one should accept their mandates. and honestly like we had our discussion with body and we’ll publish it probably before this episode so you will have a chance to hear it and he was the head of the OSC Odir for a long time and he wanted to be fair and he said he doesn’t believe that the um he said there’s no chance it’s too late which was shocking he said he said first he said there’s no chance for uh the elections to be called free and fair but when I said will the OSCE and ODIHR Has a report already been written it just needs to be stamped and the date needs to be changed indicating that the results were free and fair or somehow like semi-free and fair but you know still okay to be accepted across the world he being the former head of the OSCE ODIHR I think is too generous and maybe it’s idealistic that this organization will raise ruckus and say that the Armenian elections were not free nor fair I will be pleasantly surprised and let’s leave it at that but the only chance that Armenians have right now if the elections are falsified and I believe that if Pashinyan wins it will only be through falsification Then it will be massive street protests and a change of government through the street.
But I think it’s important to raise these issues and this EPC, this whole month of May, will probably give Pashinyan a 5-10% bump. Maybe 10% is too generous, but he has so many European events. He has this parade, even though all this time he has been saying we shouldn’t have military ambitions, we shouldn’t appear strong because the enemy will kill us. He’s going to have this military parade on May 28th to satisfy the people who want to see like some weapons and everything and believe that okay.
Asbed: He didn’t call it a military parade, whatever the hell he was calling it,
Hovik: like an inventory check or something like that. But the bottom line is Pashinyan will get a bump in May.
Asbed: You know what? It will happen. That’s why this whole European Political Committee, Euro-Armenian Summit and whatever, these things are all set up. This is all a huge PR stunt.
Okay, so that’s the polls and that’s the numbers. I’m actually quite concerned about the mechanics of what will happen in Armenia because for the past year, Pashinyan’s government has been and, of course, his rubber-stamp parliament. They’ve passed a lot of laws that are being used to arrest people, detain, prosecute, and generally harass anyone with an opposition view, leaders, followers, it doesn’t matter. And these laws infringe on freedom of expression in ridiculous ways, absolutely absurd ways.
Right now, there’s a fellow in Gyumri being prosecuted for having called a local police chief a clown. What is the suit about? I don’t understand. Did the guy just file to the court and say, I’m not a clown and I can prove that?
I don’t get what they’re talking about. This is the kind of harassment that if you call a government person a clown or an idiot or something like that, you could end up in court. This is not a free and fair environment. The second thing is there’s absolute mass surveillance and pervasive wiretapping in Armenia.
This has been proven because they have released tapes and things like that. People didn’t even know that is happening. Remember a year ago, two years ago, there were some millions of dollars allocated to Armenia in AWS and stuff like that. I am willing to bet that all that money went into mass surveillance against the people.
And there is selective, politically biased, evidentiary data retention. If your data incriminates the ruling party and the government types, the data is inexplicably lost. While data that can be used to harass people who are not supportive of the government, not only is it retained, it’s also manufactured by AI. So if you want to see what the biggest data center in the South Caucasus can do, just imagine what will happen in about a couple of years if that thing is realized.
Hovik: Well from one perspective I think right now all of this is already being done in AWS on foreign computers all that like I have no doubt that the private information of Armenian individuals is being processed so maybe it makes sense to bring it in but yeah.
I mean that’s just a joke, you’re completely right and so massive legislative changes I mean it’s just massive legislative changes to enable the government to surveil the people and then even without the law legal support people are being surveilled like you know during the protests at the end of the last in 2024 I believe the Armenian government or media associated with the Armenian government published photos of Ishkhan Saghatelyan holding his daughter’s hand and they were going overseas and I think he was on a business trip but he decided to take his family and they published photographs and video from the airport the only way that this could be done is through the airport cameras which are in control of the government and no one was Accountable for this, right?
No one was held accountable. No one was punished for this. But the government released private information of opposition members and the whole goal was to…
Asbed: Essentially official doxing.
Hovik: Doxing and to say, you know, here is here is the leader of the opposition. There are street protests right now, but your leader is going on vacation to Dubai. And all the other doxing, you know, all the other criminal cases, none of them have reached the stage of judgment.
But even before the court case begins the government immediately releases the recordings illegally through like the associated media saying through leaking the recordings because the main point is to gain political points and not I’m pretty sure none of these cases will eventually be tried in favor of the government and even if they are then European Court of Human Rights would reject them but the main goal is to gain political points against the opposition
Asbed: I want to get back to the point of freedom of speech expression in Armenia because the International Reporters Without Borders, RSF, just updated its country ratings showing a steep downgrade of Armenia from 34th to 50th position. And they report that journalists are often subjected to pressure, insults, and violence by both ruling party officials and opposition politicians, as well as their supporters, whether they’re in Parliament, the street, or on social media. And they say, in general, violence toward journalists goes unpunished. Okay.
Hovik: Meanwhile… Can I say that? Where were you all this time? So it’s been eight years, and I think that, yes, the actions of the Pakistani regime have intensified, but it’s not like this just started happening last year.
So I’m glad to see some… Yeah, let’s see.
Asbed: Let’s see if this is going to be once mentioned by the European political community. Will they once mention it?
Hovik: They won’t, but it’s still palatable enough. I think some of it is institutional momentum, right? They started off with Pashinyan as this hero, as this Santa Claus who came to save Armenia. At least that was a narrative.
And it’s difficult to then, the next year say, it’s completely the opposite. But a lot of it is tainted by this anti-Russian sentiment. And as long as Armenia is being anti-Russian, then None of the international organizations were really put Armenia in the hundredth place, for instance, or the hundred and thirtieth place where Azerbaijan is because that is how passion is acting. And despite this pretense of free media, free Internet, we see what happens when people even on the Internet overstep their bounds.
They’re arrested. They’re locked up. Given it.
Asbed: Given what I just read, the quote from Reporters Without Borders, here’s what Armen Press, the government’s press release mouthpiece, wrote. They said, there has been a noticeable decrease in physical violence and various other forms of pressure. That’s what they said. They attributed the report to the Committee to Protect Freedom of Expression.
This is a pro-Pashinyan NGO in Yerevan, and guess who funds them, Hovik?
Hovik: Three letter organization.
Asbed: No, no, no. It’s not a three-letter. It’s actually a five-letter.
Hovik: Five letters. Okay. Well, okay. I know the answer.
It’s USAID.
Asbed: That’s right. That’s right.
Hovik: Shame on them. And this is what I think is really important for people to understand. These international NGOs are not doing Armenia a favor and I’m being very nice here they’re the enemies of the Armenian people if they are supporting a government that is acting so inimically towards Armenia and that’s the only conclusion to be made right now so USAID and NED and all those other organizations and all the European flavors of those organizations are all acting in concert with Pashinyan against the people of Armenia
Asbed: Go free and fair elections in Armenia. Let’s hope for good elections. It’s a month from now, June 7th.
Hovik: I doubt that, but I think it’s important for the opposition to mobilize right now. And to be honest, I’m really, really disheartened that I’m not seeing any street protests and probably there will be muted protests in the EPC. But I think it’s important for the people to start rising up right now.
Asbed: All right, we’re gonna leave it there, Hovik. Thanks for listening, everyone. That was our Week in Review for May 2nd, and it’s recorded on May 2nd, 2026.
Hovik: Take care, everyone. Remember to like, comment, share, and help us… Make sure you’re subscribed to our channel. We are just the two people in a sea of media that is funded by foreign agencies and foreign organizations.
So any help you provide will be really important. And I urge you to go to podcasts.groong.org and send us a few bucks so that we can power this and increase our reach. All right. I’m Hovik Manucharyan.
Asbed: And I’m Asbed Bedrossian. Talk to you next week.
Hovik: Have a great week.