On 11 June, the Director of the Gallup International Association in Armenia Aram Navasardyan stated that according to the latest polls the “Armenia” bloc led by Robert Kocharyan was slightly ahead of the Civil Contract party led by Armenia's acting Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan.

Navasardyan said that according to the results, 24.1% of the respondents would vote for the “Armenia” bloc, while 23.8% would vote for the Civil Contract party. He added that compared to the results of the previous respective survey, the popularity rating of the "Armenia" bloc has increased by 3.5%, and that of the Civil Contract party—by 1.4%. Navasardyan also noted that as per this survey, about 51-52% of the respondents evaluate the work of the Armenian police negatively, and when evaluating the work of figures, the ombudsman has received the highest evaluation, whereas the respective evaluation of all the other state institutions was negative. 

In the meantime, the leader of the Republican Party Serzh Sargsyan released a recording which he claims is Pashinyan talking about the negotiation process for the settlement of the Karabakh conflict. In this recording, a male voice can be heard talking about a meeting with the presidents of Russia (Vladimir Putin), Kazakhstan (Nursultan Nazarbayev), and Belarus (Alexander Lukashenko) in Sochi in 2018. According to the recording, the three Presidents told Pashinyan that he had the historic opportunity to end the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict by signing the alleged Lavrov plan, which involved a phased withdrawal of Armenian troops from the region and the entrance of Russian peacekeepers. On the recording, Pashinyan said that without defining the status of Nagorno-Karabakh, this issue cannot be discussed. To this, the three presidents said that Azerbaijan’s President Ilham Aliyev understands that “Karabakh will never be a part of Azerbaijan.” 

Pashinyan replied by saying: “I tell them, they say, good, this is interesting, I propose to write all this on paper. And this will be an interesting topic for discussion, I will bring this piece of paper and tell the people that such a topic exists.” But Pashinyan’s interlocutors did not agree to this suggestion and said that Aliyev cannot openly declare this, since he will be accused of treason. “I understand you, he is your old friend, you don’t want to be considered a traitor, you want me to become a traitor,” Pashinyan replied. In the recording Pashinyan also said that after this conversation, he understood that it was necessary at any cost to get off this “conveyor,” to get out of the negotiation deadlock, which had previously led to the war in 2016. It is necessary to do this by any means, even by “pretending to be crazy,” the main thing is to get out of this vicious circle.

After the recordings were made public, Pashinyan dismissed Sargsyan’s claims and said the audio did not reveal anything new or damage his re-election chances. He said he has repeatedly stated that the peace proposals made by the US, Russian and French mediators favoured Azerbaijan. “After coming to power in 2018, we inherited the negotiation deadlock on the Karabakh settlement. The problem is that the OSCE Minsk Group mediators expressed the same position on the Karabakh settlement as Azerbaijan. But it is important to record that this position was formed not in 2018, but much earlier,” he said. “There were the ‘land for status’ and ‘and for peace’ formulas and there have been the ‘land for nothing’ formula from 2016 to 2018. We inherited the negotiation process precisely on this formula,” he added.

Pashinyan also said that an enclave must be exchanged with an enclave regarding the negotiations with Azerbaijan. “What is under control of Azerbaijan, let it stay under its control, what is under our control, let it stay under our control,” he said. He stressed that Armenian territories – a few tens of kilometres from Tavush province – are under Azerbaijan’s control. Pashinyan noted that this issue has been put on the table of negotiations and said that it should be viewed in a common context. He was also critical towards the media landscape in the country calling it a “garbage dump.” “Today people are working in the media field who are more like killers than journalists,” he said.

The leader of the Bright Armenia party Edmon Marukyan stated that his party would not join a separate force in the country and offered to form a government of consent. “Either all the forces unite and take the country out of the existing situation, or it does not take place and the second round of elections will take place. Consequently, for the second round not to take place and for not keeping the country in shocks for other 28 days it is necessary to authorise the Bright Armenia party to form a reconciliation and national unity government,” Marukyan said. He stated that in case this proposed agenda winning, there will be no opposition. “We may not have opposition for three years. Opposition may be in normal conditions, consequently, we may have a government of consent for 3-5 years and take the country out of the existing situation,” Marukyan added.