After the Pashinyan-Putin telephone conversation, Pashinyan’s telephone conversation with the Turkish leader Recep Tayyip Erdogan took place on June 2.

According to the message of the RA government, Pashinyan sent his best wishes to Erdogan on the occasion of the last Kurban Bayram. According to the report, Erdogan congratulated Pashinyan on his 51st birthday.

“The interlocutors also exchanged ideas on the issues of the bilateral agenda and expressed satisfaction with the occasion of the activation of contacts. In particular, the visit of Turkey’s Vice President Cevded Yilmaz to Armenia to participate in the European Political Community Summit, the decision to establish Turkey-Armenia direct trade procedures and the opening of the Akhalkalak-Kars railway for exports from Armenia and imports to Armenia were highlighted,” the message said.

The message spread by the Turkish side was almost indistinguishable from the message of the RA government, there were minor differences. The message of the Turkish presidency was more brief, it did not contain any mention of birthday congratulations or other emphasis. “During the conversation, the process of regulating Turkey-Armenia bilateral relations, as well as regional issues, was also touched upon. President Erdoğan announced that the settlement between Turkey and Armenia continues with steps aimed at starting direct trade.

Emphasizing that Turkey is making efforts to establish peace and stability in our region, President Erdoğan added that they will always support the steps to be taken in this direction,” said the message from the Turkish side.

It is noteworthy that this phone call follows Putin’s call to Pashinyan on the occasion of the latter’s birthday.

“The interlocutors also exchanged ideas on the current issues of the bilateral and multilateral agenda. The Prime Minister of Armenia thanked the President of the Russian Federation for his balanced positions, friendly tone, and support on a number of issues that give rise to mutual understanding,” said the message about the telephone conversation.

It should be noted that this year Pashinyan received birthday congratulations only from the heads and prime ministers of 4 CIS partners, as well as from the head of Turkey. In the light of the European integration vector of the RA foreign policy, it is noteworthy that Pashinyan did not receive congratulations from his Western partners.

168.amin a conversation with Russian Turkologist Viktor Nadein-Raevsky said that the personal congratulation of Nikol Pashinyan by the President of Turkey is not only a manifestation of ordinary diplomatic etiquette, but also political support from Ankara to the RA government.

According to him, this position of the Turkish side is conditioned by the general vision of regional processes that currently exists in the region. Naturally, according to the analyst, few people seem to share this vision in Armenia, so the change of power in Armenia can change this process and this foreign policy. “At present, important progress has been recorded for Turkey and Azerbaijan in a number of directions in relations with Armenia without much effort, while simultaneously maintaining the agenda of preconditions with Armenia. The continuity of the current government has provided an opportunity for Armenia-Turkey relations the current regulation and the atmosphere of predictability in it,” said the analyst, adding that this is also due to the fact that global agreements have been reached, they have geopolitical significance, such as the road connecting Azerbaijan to Azerbaijan through the RA territory and then to Turkey. As for the mention of the steps aimed at the start of direct trade, then, according to him, the subject of trade and export is currently extremely relevant for the Armenian side.

“Against the background of export problems to Russia, the RA authorities should try to show that Armenia has alternatives and can reach new agreements with Turkey, Azerbaijan or the West, that is, it is not dependent only on Russia from an economic and commercial point of view. It also has pre-election significance, because society needs to show that Armenia is able to create alternatives if there are problems in the Russian direction. People do not study in depth whether these alternatives really exist, but the conversations and statements about them create that impression, so this the observation that announcements about new trade agreements with the EU are made in this context,” said Victor Nadein-Raevsky.

Speaking about the perspective of Akhalkalak-Kars railway operation, the Turkologist said that this is also presented in the pre-election stage as a foreign political achievement of the current government, which allows Armenian voters to present concrete results of regional de-blockade and economic development. “In this case, many people do not study how this supports the Armenian economy and what benefits it will bring, but the announcement about it may have a certain effect,” the analyst noted. The latter drew attention to the fact that along with all this, the Armenian-Turkish border is not yet open, the relations are not established, because Azerbaijan is waiting for constitutional changes in Armenia, after which maybe the Peace Agreement will be signed and steps from Turkey will follow.

He believes that the support addressed by Erdogan to Pashinyan should also be considered through the prism of Ankara-Moscow regional competition and positioning. In his opinion, it is no coincidence that the call of the Turkish leader followed the phone call of the Russian president, which indicates the competition between major regional players. “Nevertheless, it should be noted that the future course of Armenia-Turkey relations is not strongly determined by individuals. Ankara’s strategic calculations are based on deep, geopolitical realities and self-interest. This means that Turkey is ready for different scenarios, and at the core of it all is the further goal of strengthening its own influence. However, before further developments, many people are waiting for the results of the elections,” said Victor Nadein-Raevsky.

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In 2021, Pashinyan unveiled to the public one of the most touted initiatives of his government’s five-year plan: to build, overhaul or renovate by 2026 at least 300 schools and 500 kindergartens and preschools. This program was presented as a key component of the educational revolution, a symbol of “New Armenia” and should become one of the main indicators of the government’s effectiveness.

5 years have passed. There are only a few weeks left until the end of this government’s mandate, and today it is already possible to assess based on clear data that this promise, among others, has not been fulfilled.

During 2023-2026, Pashinyan and the Minister of Education, Science, Culture and Sports Zhanna Andreasyan repeatedly announced in their public speeches that the implementation of the program is going well and according to the schedule. However, the reality is completely different.

According to the Ministry of Education, Science, Culture and Sports, only 135 of the planned 300 schools have been completed. In other words, more than half of the promised schools, 165, are still not ready by the end of the government’s activities.

In the case of kindergartens, only 306 of the planned 500 have been completed, and 194 remain unfinished.

It turns out that within 5 years, the school construction project was implemented by only 45%, and the kindergarten construction project by 61%. And this is when it was about one of the most important and most advertised programs of the government, which has also become one of the key propaganda theses in this pre-election period.

By the way, the government itself has indirectly accepted its own failure by planning the completion of the construction/repair works of many schools and kindergartens either before the end of 2026 or in 2027. And here a logical question arises. if the program was planned for 2021-2026, why should a significant part of it be completed? after the end of the activity of the given government, when a new government will be formed with its new program and priorities, and, why not, by another political force. In other words, the current government was actually not able to fulfill its pre-election and program commitments, and transferred their implementation to the future.

Moreover, the problem is not only in quantity. It is more remarkable what volume and quality of work was carried out in the case of the mentioned schools and kindergartens. The point is that, probably with the aim of propaganda and misleading the public, both Pashinyan and the responsible department have been drumming up the thesis “we are building a school” for years in the context of this project. However, representatives of the KP government and KP deputies professionally avoid the question of how many of these schools and kindergartens are actually built from scratch, so to speak.

Out of 135 completed schools, only 42 are newly built. The remaining 93 have been reconstructed, overhauled or repaired. The same picture is in the case of kindergartens. out of 306 completed objects, only 55 are newly built.

The most complex and most voluminous part of the construction of new facilities, namely: 146 of the 165 schools not yet completed and  Construction of 115 kindergartens fell to at the end of 2026 and in 2027.

In other words, the government was able to carry out the repair works relatively quickly, but it failed the most complex and the most important, the construction of new educational infrastructures.

A very logical and undesirable question for the authorities arises. if the government was able to build only 42 schools and 55 kindergartens within 5 years, then how is it going to complete a much larger number of objects in a few months, which entail much more extensive construction work?

In fact, the failure of the “300 schools, 500 kindergartens” program is not a surprise discovery. In recent years, the performance reports of the state budget and Yerevan city budget, medium-term expenditure plans and other official documents have regularly recorded the low performance of school construction and kindergarten construction and major repair projects. In various periods, the expenses of the “Establishment, construction, improvement of public educational and pre-school institutions” project were under-executed by tens of billions of drams, and in some cases even less than a third of the planned expenses were implemented. And both experts and opposition politicians are vocal about it. However, the government chose to ignore those alarms.

The program “300 schools, 500 kindergartens” should have become a symbol of the success of Nikol Pashinyan’s administration, but instead it became a formula that best describes the management style of this government: high bar, loud announcements, large-scale propaganda and in the end, a long list of unfulfilled promises. It would be more honest to RA citizens to change the name of that program to “135 schools, 306 kindergartens”.

And we are not talking about the fact that information is repeatedly published about the defects, low-quality works and design problems recorded during the construction of schools and kindergartens. It is also needless to say that, in rare cases, the blame for deviations from the deadline and delays is always placed on a third party, but never on the government.

If the “300 schools, 500 kindergartens” program was really “going quite well”, why is Armenia still waiting for the promised 165 schools and 194 kindergartens in 2026?

The efficiency of the state administration is evaluated not by the promises made, but by their fulfillment. When one of the most important targets set by the government is not met within 5 years, and its implementation is actually postponed after the end of the project, it is no longer a construction or organizational problem, but a question of political responsibility.

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On the eve of the parliamentary elections on June 7, Armenia has turned into the scene of an open geopolitical confrontation between the West and Russia. During this campaign, Moscow is especially tightening the political rhetoric day by day regarding Yerevan’s EU integration policy. Russia declares at different levels that “Armenia cannot dance at two weddings”. Russian Deputy Prime Minister Alexey Overchuk said today that it is necessary to see who will win the elections, and then only take measures and decide.

“Because if the pro-Western forces win, it means that Armenia is moving towards the European Union. And then it will be necessary to take appropriate measures,” he said. And Maria Zakharova claims that all this has nothing to do with the upcoming elections in Armenia. The Deputy Chairman of the Security Council, Dmitry Medvedev, made it clear in a particularly tough style with his statements that “geopolitical betrayals” always have a heavy economic and security price.

Many people in Armenia believe that this political pressure of the Kremlin has a clear pre-election context. At the beginning of the campaign, the President of the Russian Federation, Vladimir Putin, made a statement in which he literally stated: “We expect that the pro-Russian forces of Armenia will also actively participate in the elections and have the opportunity to present an alternative vision of the country’s development.” Shortly after this address on May 1st, the summit of the European political community took place in Armenia, after which the Russian side began to make harsh comments and the serious problems of exporting Armenian products, which was perceived as the use of economic leverage. Nevertheless, Moscow avoids burning the bridges for good. the other day, Putin called Pashinyan to congratulate him on his birthday, and later it became clear that there was a preliminary agreement to meet after the elections and discuss all issues. The authorities, as well as the West, circulate the topic of Russian pressures in the best way, showing consolidation around the RA authorities.

The collective West does not hide that it supports Pashinyan’s government in every issue. During the pre-election campaign, US Secretary of State Marco Rubio’s one-hour visit to Yerevan took place, which became the first chord of American support. Days after that, Rubio openly stated that “the Russians want Pashinyan to lose these elections.” Moreover, US President Donald Trump expressed his personal clear support to Pashinyan in a post on his social platform.

The RA-US TRIPP (Trump Route for International Peace and Prosperity) framework agreement was also signed today. This document, which aims to create a new transport and energy route bypassing Russia and Iran, gives Washington a 74% controlling stake in the joint venture.

Along with the American side, the European Union also deployed its “anti-pressure” tools. During today’s phone conversation between Pashinyan and Ursula von der Leyen, the President of the European Commission called Moscow’s actions “unacceptable economic pressure”. As a quick response, Brussels announced an immediate support package, with which 50 million euros will be directed to the resilience of the Armenian agri-food sector. The EU, according to announcements, seems to be trying to solve the issue of the export of flowers blocked in the Russian market, it was announced that the first large batch of Armenian flowers will be sent to Latvia, showing that the Russian embargo can be overcome with European solidarity. However, everyone understands that these are cosmetic, situational steps that will not solve the created systemic problem, but will create the impression that the EU is solving the problem.

Thus, this lightning reaction by Brussels just three days before the elections – an immediate package of 50 million euros and the urgent opening of the Latvian market for Armenian flowers – can hardly be considered merely as an ordinary economic partnership. It is obvious that these are unique “pre-election gifts” presented by the European Union to Pashinyan’s government, which have a clear political goal. Brussels is trying to objectively show the Armenian voter that the European vector has quick, tangible and financially beneficial results, which directly serves to strengthen the positions of the existing government before the vote and increase the attractiveness of the Western orientation.

By showing that the possible loss of the Russian market can be instantly compensated by European financial injections and new logistics channels, the West is trying to ease the economic worries among the Armenian public. This is a clearly calculated step, aimed at ensuring that the citizens approaching the polling stations on June 7 vote not out of fear, but seeing the tangible and guaranteed alternative offered by the West, which further sharpens the geopolitical nature of the elections.

The hasty signing of the TRIPP agreement with Washington on the eve of the vote is exactly the same political move. All these geopolitical gestures become the psychological and economic counterweight that are meant to strengthen in the eyes of the Armenian voters the foreign policy line that the authorities are leading, and which is the most criticized sphere within RA.

These developments document that Armenia is standing on the threshold of the most geopoliticized elections in its history, which is clearly evidenced by the unprecedented and open involvement of major powers in the pre-election processes. Moscow’s direct admonitions and economic hints, as well as the lightning-fast financial and strategic “gifts” of Washington and Brussels prove that on June 7, they are trying to make the Armenian voter face an external election. The final decision-maker remains the citizen of Armenia. In this most geopolitical election, the Armenian voter should be guided not by agendas imposed from outside, but by his inner convictions.

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