Activist says Armenia is under authoritarian rule amid foreign military and political influence

Armenia has developed a form of collective authoritarian rule, with power concentrated in a group of political actors operating under the military and political influence of a foreign country, opposition activist Narek Samsonyan has said.

Writing on Facebook on Thursday, Samsonyan, head of the Civil Consciousness NGO, founder of the AntiFake.am news website and co-host of the Imnemnimi podcast, argued that Armenia's current system of government was no longer based on the rule of a single individual but on a network of actors bound by shared interests.

“Armenia has evolved into a system of collective authoritarian rule, with power consolidated within the ruling group,” he wrote.

He characterized it as an anti-democratic regime comprising key figures within the ruling system and operating under foreign military and political influence.

Samsonyan identified Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan as the group's leader and the central figure representing its collective interests. However, he argued that the regime's continued existence did not depend on Pashinyan alone, adding that other members of the system could play an even more significant role in ensuring its survival.

He said confronting such collective authoritarian regimes was considerably more difficult than challenging a system built around one-person rule.

“Failure to recognize this fundamental reality is also one of the reasons for the setbacks in the struggle against Pashinyan's brand of collective authoritarianism,” Samsonyan wrote.