Artur Osipyan, displaced from Nagorno-Karabakh after its annexation by Azerbaijan, recently challenged Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan during a campaign stop and was promptly detained.

Osipyan charged the leader with echoing Azerbaijani positions and undermining his former homeland.

In reply to references about the 2023 offensive that displaced 100,000 ethnic Armenians, Pashinyan reportedly stated that Osipyan should have perished instead of local youth and questioned why he survived.

The activist now faces charges of hooliganism and disrupting the campaign.

Detentions tied to politics and inflammatory rhetoric have risen sharply in Yerevan ahead of the 7 June vote.

The governing Civil Contract party is expected to claim roughly half the ballots, while the main challenger Strong Armenia under Samvuel Karapetyan trails at around 19 percent.

Pashinyan, seeking another term, has drawn sharp rebuke for jailing clergy and the head of the leading opposition group.

"They are abusing the criminal justice mechanism to silence critiques and any dissent," Anna Melikyan, legal expert at Protection of Rights without Borders, told EUobserver.

Her organisation supports those uprooted from Nagorno-Karabakh, whose status as Azerbaijani territory was confirmed in talks between Yerevan and Washington.

"The ruling party presents itself for the electoral campaign as a vote for peace," Melikyan noted regarding the August 2025 accord, "although there is nothing about the Nagorno-Karabakh population in the treaty."

After earlier clashes that claimed 4,000 lives in 2020 and 200 in 2023, Pashinyan relinquished Armenian oversight of the enclave to secure calm and improve ties across the South Caucasus.

Foreign policy dominates the race, with Moscow seeking to undermine Pashinyan while Brussels and Washington have moved quickly to back him.

"Russia aims to hurt Armenia's economy and influence the outcome of the parliamentary elections in Armenia. We will continue supporting Armenia to handle such attempts of coercion," Anouar El Anouni, an EU Commission spokesperson, told reporters in Brussels earlier this week.

Armenia has gained Western attention after Georgia chose the pro-Russian Georgian Dream party in 2024 and amid plans for the Trump Route for International Peace and Prosperity corridor through southern Armenia linking Europe to resource-rich Central Asia.

Brussels hosted its first EU-Armenia summit in May to strengthen its presence in the shifting region.

"We are used as a platform against Russia," Karapetyan told reporters on 27 May. "Every day we could scream about the best relationship with the EU, but not be able in any way to capitalise on that relationship."

The wealthy opposition figure faces scrutiny over Russian connections yet countered that his rival "hasn't taken a single step for Armenia to adopt at least one European value. The easiest of them democracy."