After last month’s victory for democracy in Hungary, where voters ousted longtime Prime Minister Viktor Orban, Armenia appears to be the next battleground in the global contest between autocracy and democracy—though the contours of that conflict look a little different in Yerevan.

Armenia’s parliamentary elections are scheduled for June 7, presenting a test for whether the post-Soviet state’s current leadership will allow the country to remain on a democratic path.

It is hardly surprising that U.S. President Donald Trump is taking the wrong approach to the battle. Rather than pressing for free and fair elections, he is unconditionally backing the incumbent prime minister, who has increasingly sought to tilt the electoral playing field in his favor. However, it is deeply disappointing that European governments are following suit, abandoning the democratic process in the name of countering Russian influence efforts.

Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan rose to power in 2018 on the promise of democratic renewal after the country’s self-styled Velvet Revolution, and he has deepened Armenia’s ties with the West. Yet today he faces uncertain prospects: A February poll predicted Pashinyan and his Civil Contract party would take between 20 and 30 percent of the vote. Seventeen parties and two electoral alliances are competing in the June elections.

With 30 percent of voters undecided, according to the February poll, the election could go in any direction. If no contender produces a “stable parliamentary majority”—on its own or in coalition—within six days of the results, the vote will go to a second round. In that case, opposition parties could team up to beat Pashinyan.

Strong Armenia, a party recently founded by billionaire Samvel Karapetyan, has emerged as the strongest challenger. It is polling a distant second to Civil Contract, according to the February poll. Strong Armenia is seen as friendlier to the Kremlin than Civil Contract. However, there are also pro-Western candidates among the opposition.

As I saw on a visit to Armenia in March, Pashinyan is pulling out all the stops to prevent his party’s defeat, using tactics from the autocratic playbook. His government has arrested opposition members and detained critical journalists. The prime minister is also undermining the independence of the judiciary and making unprecedented interventions into the workings of the Armenian Apostolic Church.

Pashinyan already dominates political coverage by Armenia’s state-run media and is increasingly deploying state resources to surveil and hound the opposition. Vague crimes such as “hooliganism”—a classic Soviet-era offense—are being resurrected to silence critics. State employees, teachers, and even students have been deployed to telegraph support for the ruling party.

There is a geopolitical backdrop to this election. In 2023, Azerbaijan launched a lightning offensive in the disputed territory of Nagorno-Karabakh, violating a 2020 ceasefire. The enclave had been largely controlled by its ethnic Armenian residents since the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991. After Russia brokered a new ceasefire in 2023 that heavily favored Azerbaijan, 120,000 ethnic Armenianswere forcibly displaced from their homes in Nagorno-Karabakh.

Having lost Nagorno-Karabakh on his watch, Pashinyan is eager to put the issue behind him. He began attacking the national Armenian Apostolic Church for taking up the cause of these displaced people; the church also seeks the release of at least 19 Armenians detained in Azerbaijan. Pashinyan’s position—ostensibly in the name of peace—is likely dictated by Armenia’s weak military position, but it has sparked opposition that could shape the election.

Karapetyan, the leader of Strong Armenia, is an entrepreneur and philanthropist. Last year, he was arrested on the thin pretext that his public opposition to Pashinyan’s attacks on the national church represented a threat to overthrow the government. While in custody, Karapetyan launched Strong Armenia.

One might expect the European Union, if not Trump, to oppose Pashinyan’s electoral manipulation as a violation of democratic principles. That is what happened in Hungary, where challenger Peter Magyar prevailed despite Trump’s active support for the autocratic Orban. The EU’s defense of democracy in that case, conditioning billions of euros in subsidies on respect for the rule of law, made a difference.

Yet Pashinyan has figured out how to neutralize any European objection to his suppression of opposition voices: He claims to be combating Russian influence, and European leaders are buying it.

In Ukraine, European governments are not only fighting Russian aggression but also defending Ukrainian democracy. In Armenia, they seem interested only in opposing Russia. Armenia was among the post-Soviet states that retained a close relationship with Moscow. That began to waver after the Kremlin, preoccupied with the Ukraine war, stopped protecting the Armenians in Nagorno-Karabakh. Yet Russia still wants Armenia in its camp.

Russia has potential allies in this election. Strong Armenia seeks to bolster ties with the Kremlin, noting Russia’s large role in the Armenian economy and the two countries’ traditional military relationship. Armenia Alliance, another opposition party organized by former Armenian Prime Minister and President Robert Kocharyan, also seeks closer ties with Moscow. Both parties are critical of what they see as Pashinyan’s abandonment of Nagorno-Karabakh.

But while Western governments fixate on the Russia threat, they are paying little attention to Pashinyan’s own attacks on Armenia’s democracy. Rather than proceeding neutrally to thwart Russian disinformation amid the election or to stymie other Russian tricks, these governments seem to have accepted at face value Pashinyan’s narrative that he is the pro-Western candidate. They are pushing not for free and fair elections but for a particular electoral outcome.

Trump has been the most brazen in his support of Pashinyan. He sent U.S. Vice President J.D. Vance to Armenia in February to promote Washington’s peacemaking between Armenia and Azerbaijan. The peace deal that Trump helped engineer last August, which has not yet been implemented, is controversial because it would grant Azerbaijan unimpeded commercial access through Armenian territory (part of the sycophantically named Trump Route for International Peace and Prosperity). In Armenia, that concession is widely viewed as rewarding Azerbaijan’s military adventurism. Vance used his trip to explicitly endorse Pashinyan for reelection.

European governments have barely been more subtle. The European Political Community, a 47-state group organized by French President Emmanual Macron after Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022, met in Armenia on May 4. The stated purpose of the summit was to defend Armenia’s sovereignty and bring the country closer to the EU. However, opposition leaders viewed the summit being held on the eve of the elections as tantamount to an endorsement of Pashinyan. Macron underscored this message by calling Pashinyan “very impressive.”

The EU is also deploying a mission to Armenia before the June vote to fight “hybrid threats,” a term often used to describe Russian influence operations. The bloc is making no comparable effort to combat Pashinyan’s attacks on democracy. At a summit in Armenia on May 5, the European Union highlighted the importance of democracy in the country but made no mention of the threats posed by Pashinyan.

European governments should know better than to equate Pashinyan’s pro-Western rhetoric with respect for democracy. Yet they seem willing to continue nudging the country in a pro-Western direction without much regard for how its leader is undermining what the West is supposed to stand for.

That is cynically short-sighted. The means do not justify the ends when they are blatantly contradictory. If Western commitment to democracy is seen as merely rhetorical, readily abandoned for geopolitical calculations, it encourages leaders worldwide to offer their own rationalizations for forsaking democracy.

Armenia is at risk of being saddled with an elected autocrat. So soon after European pressure helped to redeem democracy in Hungary, European governments should not abandon democracy in Armenia despite Trump’s indifference.