From "mentally ill" to "Armenia's only hope"
Azerbaijan's media environment is not a free market of ideas. Under tight press restrictions, pro-government outlets form the bulk of what is available, and -- as the Caucasus outlet OC Media documents -- narratives are "largely uniform and distributed in a top-down fashion." For most of Pashinyan's tenure, that machine treated him the way it treats all Armenian leaders. After the 2020 war, the outlet Trend cited an Armenian cleric calling him "mentally ill" and said he was "leading Armenia to death."
That changed. In the months before the 2026 vote, Azerbaijan's pro-government media -- in OC Media's words -- "began churning out pro-Pashinyan content, just in time for Armenia's parliamentary elections," shifting "from bashing Pashinyan to openly suggesting he is Armenia's only hope." When a media system whose narratives are set top-down reverses its line on a foreign leader during that leader's election campaign, the reversal is itself a signal worth reading.
The shared script: "war versus peace"
Pashinyan ran as the candidate of peace and branded his three main rivals -- former President Robert Kocharyan, oligarch Gagik Tsarukyan, and detained Russian-Armenian tycoon Samvel Karapetyan -- the "three-headed war party." Azerbaijani media echoed that exact framing. President Aliyev himself reinforced it in a 10 May speech, warning that "within Armenia's political sphere there are still circles driven by hatred toward the Azerbaijani people and state," and that "if they come to power, it is the Armenian people who will suffer."
The pro-government outlet Caliber, one of Baku's most vitriolic commentators on Armenia, ran articles that read, in OC Media's assessment, "almost as if they could be found in a pro-Pashinyan Armenian media outlet." A 13 April Caliber piece approvingly described Pashinyan's strategy as "recognising the new regional architecture that emerged following Azerbaijan's restoration of its territorial integrity" -- Baku's phrase for the 2023 operation that emptied Nagorno-Karabakh -- and cast the opposition as offering only "uncertain, potentially dangerous" revanchism. Baku's media and Yerevan's incumbent were, for the duration of the campaign, reading from the same script.
The mechanics of an endorsement
Azerbaijan's public broadcaster stated outright that "Pashinyan's government is acceptable to Azerbaijan in terms of achieving lasting peace in the region." The state television channel AzTV, according to OC Media, provided "constant monitoring of Pashinyan's campaign, translating all of his official statements into Azerbaijani." This is not ambient sympathy; it is a state broadcaster operationalizing coverage of a foreign candidate's campaign in its own language.
Opposition voices inside Azerbaijan read it the same way. Jamil Hasanli, who chairs the opposition National Council of Democratic Forces, told OC Media: "At the moment, a Pashinyan victory is more beneficial for the region, for Azerbaijan, and for Armenia as a whole, and the Azerbaijani leadership understands this well. That's why anti-Armenian rhetoric in government media has decreased today. The government orders the media to do what suits it, and they carry out these orders." The exiled Azerbaijani historian Altay Goyushov added the strategic logic: a Pashinyan win suited Baku because he "rejects military rhetoric, renounces revenge," seeks ties with Azerbaijan and Turkey -- and because Aliyev did not want Russia-aligned forces, which much of Armenia's opposition has been linked to, in power in Yerevan.
Claiming the win: "the winner wasn't on the ballot"
Civil Contract won the 7 June 2026 election. Within days, Baku's apparatus moved to claim the result as its own. Azerbaijani MP Rizvan Nabiyev said Azerbaijan "positively assesses the growing support for Azerbaijan's peace programme in Armenia," and that "the president's peace initiatives forced the other side to abandon its revanchist policies." Parliamentary Speaker Sahiba Gafarova praised Aliyev for a "victory" that "completely changed the entire situation in the region."
The outlets were blunter. The pro-government outlet Report headlined its coverage "Azerbaijan's peace agenda wins at the polls," declaring that "Armenian society voted for peace" and that accepting "peace on the terms proposed by Baku was not just an option, but the only mechanism for the Armenian state's survival." Caliber went furthest: the real winner, it wrote, was "a politician who wasn't, and couldn't have been, on the Armenian ballot" -- Ilham Aliyev. When a neighbouring authoritarian state's media declares its own president the true victor of your election, that is not a compliment to your sovereignty.
The bill: constitution and the dismantling of Karabakh structures
Crucially, Baku's media did not treat the win as an endpoint but as a down payment. Caliber spelled out what it said Yerevan now owes: "Now Baku expects the Armenian state to complete this policy in practical and legal terms. The first step for the new government is to finally dismantle the remnants of structures linked to Karabakh separatism" -- the Nagorno-Karabakh government-in-exile -- and to "adopt a new constitution without reference to the declaration" underpinning the idea of unification (miatsum), "and thereby legally close the issue of territorial claims against Azerbaijan."
This tracks Baku's standing precondition: Azerbaijan has made amending Armenia's constitution a condition for signing the peace treaty, arguing the constitution carries territorial claims through its reference to the Declaration of Independence. Here the documented record cuts against the simplest version of the "Baku's puppet" story: Civil Contract did not win the constitutional majority required to call such a referendum, and the constitutional change remains uncertain. Whatever Baku expects, the legal machinery to deliver it is not currently in Pashinyan's hands -- a fact we state plainly because the evidence requires it.
"In Baku's pocket"? The accusation against the evidence
Critics of Pashinyan, OC Media notes, "regularly accus[e] the prime minister of being in Baku's pocket." OWL does not assert that as established fact, and the evidence does not all point one way. Even as it boosted Pashinyan, Baku never disarmed: Goyushov stresses that on Azerbaijani social media and television "the rhetoric of 'Western Azerbaijan' hasn't weakened at all -- it's intensifying." State agency Azertac published a December 2025 interview branding Pashinyan's government a "dictatorship." Caliber attacked Armenia's Foreign Ministry in April for commemorating the Maragha massacre. Baku backed the man while keeping every weapon trained on the state.
That is the honest shape of it, and it is more damning than a slogan. One does not need Pashinyan to be a paid agent for the picture to be alarming. The verifiable facts are these: the media apparatus of the state that defeated Armenia in war, emptied Nagorno-Karabakh, and claims Armenia's own territory as "Western Azerbaijan" actively preferred Armenia's incumbent, monitored and amplified his campaign, declared its own president the true winner of Armenia's election, and immediately presented the bill -- a rewritten constitution and the dismantling of Karabakh structures. The question OWL puts to readers is not whether Pashinyan takes orders. It is simpler and harder: when your adversary's propaganda machine wants you to win, and tells you what it expects in return, whose interests does your government actually serve? A leadership answerable to Armenians owes them that answer.
Sources: OC Media, "Azerbaijan's media apparatus goes all-in for Pashinyan" by Nate Ostiller, Aytan Farhadova and Arshaluys Barseghyan (the top-down structure of Azerbaijani pro-government media; the shift from "bashing Pashinyan" to "Armenia's only hope"; the Trend "mentally ill" citation; the "three-headed war party" echo; Aliyev's 10 May speech; the Caliber 13 April strategy article and its coverage of Kocharyan, Tsarukyan and Karapetyan; the public broadcaster's "acceptable to Azerbaijan" statement; AzTV translating Pashinyan's statements; and the on-record assessments of opposition figure Jamil Hasanli and historian Altay Goyushov, including Goyushov's note that "Western Azerbaijan" rhetoric is intensifying). OC Media, "How Azerbaijan's pro-government media made Pashinyan's victory all about Ilham Aliyev" by Aytan Farhadova (the 7 June 2026 election; MP Rizvan Nabiyev's and Speaker Sahiba Gafarova's statements; the Report headline "Azerbaijan's peace agenda wins at the polls"; Caliber's "winner not on the ballot" framing and its demands on the new government to dismantle Karabakh structures and adopt a new constitution; Azerbaijan's constitutional pre-condition; and Civil Contract's failure to secure a constitutional majority). The Azertac December 2025 "dictatorship" interview and the Caliber April "Maragha"/"institutional schizophrenia" article are as reported by OC Media. All direct quotations are reproduced from these sources. OWL editorial framings -- the "shared script" reading, the "down payment" framing of the post-election demands, and the closing who-benefits question -- are identified as OWL analysis and kept distinct from the sourced record. OWL does not assert that Prime Minister Pashinyan acts on Azerbaijani instruction; the "in Baku's pocket" characterization is reported as an accusation made by his critics.