They include two senior members of the opposition Hayrenik (Fatherland) party led by Artur Vanetsian, a former head of Armenia’s National Security Service (NSS) who has stepped up his political activities lately.
The Anti-Corruption Committee (ACC) charged Khachik Galstian and Aram Kocharian with trying to buy votes in last month’s local election held in a district just west of Yerevan comprising the town of Vagharshapat and 17 nearby villages. The law-enforcement agency did not shed light on the accusations strongly denied by lawyers representing the two men. Nor did it name the six other arrested suspects.
The ACC petitioned a court in Yerevan to allow it to hold Galstian and Kocharian in pretrial detention. A court hearing on the request was still ongoing as of Tuesday evening.
Galstian managed Hayrenik’s election campaign while Kocharian was second on the list of the party’s election candidates in Vagharshapat. The party fared poorly in the election narrowly won by Pashinian’s Civil Contract party. Galstian accused the Armenian government of vote buying, gerrymandering and other foul play in an interview with the Hraparak daily published one day before his arrest.
Law-enforcement authorities already detained on November 17 five members of another opposition group which finished second in the polls. They all were set free hours later after being charged with vote buying.
Vanetsian shrugged the off the accusations levelled against his political allies and claimed that their arrests are the latest manifestation of Pashinian’s political persecution of his opponents. The claim was echoed by other opposition leaders.
“No citizen with opposition views is now immune to a government decision to arrest them on trumped-up charges,” Vanetsian told reporters. “This is yet another pathetic criminal case.”
“This must be a wake-up call to all opposition forces because the authorities are thus paving the way for arresting more people on trumped-charges, intimidating them or halting their political activities in the run-up to the forthcoming elections,” he said.
Dozens of other critics of the government, including another opposition mayor, three archbishops and a billionaire businessman, have also been arrested in recent months. The authorities deny that they are political prisoners.
Opposition fears of more such arrests have been stoked by election-related support requested by Pashinian’s administration from the European Union. EU foreign policy chief Kaja Kallas said earlier this month that it asked for the kind of “help to fight foreign malign interference” which the EU recently provided to Moldova where two opposition parties deemed pro-Russian were barred from participating in recent parliamentary elections. Pashinian’s detractors say the Armenian authorities too may disqualify some major opposition groups from the 2026 vote.
The Armenian Foreign Ministry insisted on December 16 that the authorities only want the EU to help them “counter potential hybrid threats” to the proper conduct of the elections. Armenian officials have still not elaborated on those threats or said publicly whether they emanate from Russia.