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Armenian authorities arrested six candidates from a pro-Russian opposition party on Saturday, less than 24 hours before polls opened in a parliamentary election that has put the country's drift away from Moscow at the center of the political debate.
The six belong to the Strong Armenia alliance, led by Russian-Armenian billionaire Samvel Karapetyan, who is himself under house arrest on charges of calling for the overthrow of the government, accusations he has rejected as politically motivated.
Armenia's state Investigative Committee carried out the arrests but did not respond to questions about the reasons for the move. The Central Election Commission confirmed it had authorized investigators to initiate criminal proceedings against the candidates, without elaborating.
The arrests came hours after the Central Election Commission unanimously rejected a last-minute bid to remove Strong Armenia from Sunday's ballot entirely.
The challenge, filed by the Republic Party, alleged that the alliance and individuals associated with it had engaged in vote-buying and other concealed forms of material inducement during the campaign.
Commission Chairman Vahagn Hovakimyan announced shortly after midnight, following nearly two hours of deliberations, that there were no grounds to invalidate the alliance's registration, and that the revocation request rested on assumptions rather than established facts.
The bid had been encouraged, at least indirectly, by Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan, who during a televised debate the previous day suggested opposition parties could seek Strong Armenia's disqualification. He said his own Civil Contract party had held back from doing so to avoid the appearance of fearing electoral defeat.
Strong Armenia's legal representative, Aram Vardevanyan, dismissed the complaint before the commission as baseless, arguing that no violation had been formally substantiated. "The Electoral Code speaks about continuous violations, yet not a single violation has been substantiated," he said.
The party's spokeswoman was separately quoted in Armenian media as saying the group was "ready for all scenarios" on Sunday.
Around 2.4 million Armenians are eligible to vote in Sunday's election. Polls show Civil Contract leading with between 24% and 32% support, while Strong Armenia trails in second place with between 6% and 11%.
The vote is also being watched as a measure of public backing for Pashinyan's efforts to forge a peace agreement with neighboring Azerbaijan, with whom Armenia fought two wars over the disputed Nagorno-Karabakh region.
Strong Armenia, which advocates maintaining Yerevan's economic and political ties with Moscow and has accused Pashinyan of provoking a rupture with Russia, represents the starkest alternative on the ballot. Russia has imposed restrictions on Armenian exports in recent weeks in apparent response to Yerevan's warming relations with the West, making the country's strategic orientation one of the election's defining fault lines.
Armenia has been moving toward closer ties with the European Union and the United States, a marked departure from its historical dependence on Moscow.
The campaign period has been marked by broader tensions over electoral integrity. Armenian civil society groups have raised alarm over what they describe as Russian state-sponsored disinformation efforts ahead of the vote. Moscow routinely denies interfering in the internal affairs of other countries.
Armenia's Interior Ministry said earlier this week it had identified at least 78 cases of pre-election crimes and detained 44 people, though reports did not specify which parties those individuals were affiliated with. The election commission's rejection of the disqualification bid means Strong Armenia will appear on the ballot when voting begins Sunday, even as six of its candidates remain in custody.
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