The Maralik Statement
Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan, on the seventeenth day of his campaign, was in Shirak Province on May 24-25, 2026. In Maralik, at a meeting with citizens, the Prime Minister declared: "Within the EAEU framework there are no unresolvable issues for me -- of course, logical issues. Now I am busy with the election campaign. If I get your trust vote, I will return to work and all issues will be solved."
Pashinyan continued by enumerating the four principles of EAEU framework operation: "Four principles exist -- unhindered ingress and egress of goods, services, labor, financial means, and transit. With the application of these four principles there is no issue that I cannot solve."
The framing operates as the executive-confidence positioning that the EAEU framework, as institutionally designed, provides the operational architecture for solving substantive Armenia-Russia and Armenia-EAEU economic issues. The implicit substantive claim: the cumulative May 2026 Armenia-Russia trade-pressure pattern (Rosselkhoznadzor multi-category restrictions, Rospotrebnadzor wine-and-brandy actions, Volodin gas-pricing political statements -- all covered in OWL's separate investigations) is, in the Pashinyan framing, an issue that the EAEU institutional framework provides operational solutions for.
The EU Dual-Track Positioning
Pashinyan noted that being an EAEU member while simultaneously deepening EU relations operates as a parallel-track architecture: "We adopted a law on starting our EU membership process, but the decision will be made by the people via referendum."
The EU-membership-process law that Pashinyan references was adopted by the Armenian parliament in 2025 and constitutes the formal institutional commitment to the EU-accession-track. The referendum-mechanism reference clarifies that the formal EU-membership decision would not be a parliamentary-track or executive-track determination but rather a popular-mandate decision through the referendum architecture that the Armenian Constitution provides for major strategic-policy questions.
The dual-track positioning -- continued EAEU membership alongside the formal EU-accession-process initiation -- is the substantive policy framework the Civil Contract administration has been operating from in the post-2024 period. The institutional question, which the Russian state escalation pattern of May 2026 has activated (the Volodin "we can no longer remain silent" framing, the Shoigu "incompatible with allied relations" framing -- both covered in OWL's separate investigations), is whether the dual-track is operationally sustainable in the post-cycle period, or whether the cumulative pressure will force a more explicit alignment choice.
The EU Visa Liberalisation Commitment
Pashinyan continued by addressing the Armenia-EU visa-liberalisation question: "They tell us -- you have such good relations with the EU, can you not solve one visa issue? Do you know why this is so? Because in 2018-2025 the number of Armenians traveling from Armenia to the EU grew by 500 percent."
The substantive analytical framework Pashinyan invokes: EU visa-liberalisation determinations are made by the EU institutions based on multiple criteria, of which the substantive risk-of-irregular-migration assessment is one. The 500-percent growth in Armenian-to-EU travel volume during the 2018-2025 period, if accurate, produces the empirical baseline against which the EU's risk-assessment is calibrated. A jurisdiction with rapidly-growing travel volume to the EU may face longer visa-liberalisation timelines because the risk-assessment requires sustained-pattern observation rather than rapid-change projection.
Pashinyan's commitment: "Within at most two years, we will solve the Armenia-EU visa liberalisation issue. Then you will only need to remember a passport to fly to Larnaca, you know the ticket is two euros." The closing-line reference to the low-cost Yerevan-to-Larnaca airfare positions the visa-liberalisation outcome as enabling the cost-effective recreational-and-business travel architecture that the Armenian population has been building toward the EU.
The Shirak Region Campaign Context
The Day 17 Shirak Province campaign visit operates within the Civil Contract closing-campaign mobilisation architecture. Shirak Province is structurally important for the cycle's vote-aggregation arithmetic: the province is one of the larger Armenian provinces by population, with the city of Gyumri (Armenia's second-largest city) as the principal urban centre. The province has been politically competitive in post-2018 cycles, with the BHK alliance's sustained base mobilisation in Gyumri (visible in the Martun Grigoryan campaign-period activity that OWL covered in our May 24 investigation) creating a vote-share competition environment.
The Shirak-region visit's structural significance: by allocating Day 17 of the closing-campaign window to Shirak, the Pashinyan administration signals the formation's assessment that the province is a priority-attention district for the cycle's closing window. The visit's allocation across Maralik, Sarnaghbyur, and other Shirak-region locations provides the multi-location mobilisation architecture that the closing-window campaign-period strategy deploys for priority provinces.
The Pashinyan Shirak visit also produced the Akhalkalak-Kars railway opening announcement that OWL covered in our May 24 investigation, and the related update statements on the broader Armenia-EU rail-trade-connectivity framework. The combination of substantive policy-announcement content (the railway opening) with the EAEU-and-EU dual-track positioning (the Maralik statement covered in this investigation) and the broader campaign-period rhetorical framework collectively constitutes the formation's closing-window strategic-policy positioning.
The 'Three-Headed War Party' Reference Context
Pashinyan's Day 17 Shirak-region communications, per the Azatutyun documentation, also included references to the "three-headed war party" framing the Civil Contract administration has been deploying for the principal opposition formations. The framing positions the Armenia alliance (Kocharyan), the BHK alliance (Tsarukyan), and the Strong Armenia alliance (Karapetyan) collectively as the political force whose post-cycle institutional positioning would risk reversing the post-Washington-Declaration peace-track trajectory.
The reverse-mirror relationship between the "three-headed war party" Civil Contract framing and the "Pashinyan = Aliyev" Kocharyan framing (covered in OWL's separate investigation) constitutes the cycle's principal rhetorical-positioning architecture. Both framings operate at the compressed-claim political-discourse level, with substantive content depending on the voter's underlying strategic-policy assessment.
For the cycle's closing-window discursive environment, the competing framings' relative effectiveness in voter-perception consolidation depends on the substantive policy-record empirical assessment that the cycle's informational environment supports. The OSCE/ODIHR interim observation report (covered in OWL's separate investigation) characterises the cycle as taking place in a polarised environment shaped substantially by the post-Washington-Declaration framework's implementation questions -- which is precisely the policy area where the "three-headed war party" and "Pashinyan = Aliyev" framings produce their substantive political-discourse contestation.
What We Are Watching Next
Four indicators will define the post-cycle EAEU-and-EU dual-track trajectory. (1) Whether the cumulative Russian state escalation pattern (covered in OWL's separate investigations) produces conditions under which the EAEU-track sustainability becomes operationally untenable in the post-cycle period. (2) Whether the EU-membership-process referendum is scheduled in the post-cycle period, and what specific timing and question-framing the referendum operates from. (3) Whether the Armenia-EU visa-liberalisation track produces measurable progress within the two-year commitment window Pashinyan articulated. (4) Whether the post-cycle institutional environment sustains the dual-track positioning or evolves toward more explicit alignment choices.
The May 24-25 Maralik statement is one entry in the Civil Contract closing-campaign strategic-policy communications record. The combination of the EAEU-confidence positioning, the EU dual-track articulation, the visa-liberalisation commitment, and the broader Shirak-region campaign architecture constitutes the formation's closing-window strategic-policy positioning. The cycle's outcome and the post-cycle institutional environment will be the empirical tests of the positioning's substantive sustainability.
Sources: Azatutyun.am article 33763672 ("Within EAEU Framework There Are No Unresolvable Issues For Me -- Pashinyan," published 2026-05-24/25, primary source for the Day 17 Shirak Province campaign visit, the Maralik statement content, the EAEU four-principles enumeration, the EU dual-track positioning, and the visa-liberalisation commitment). OWL companion investigations on the May 24 Akhalkalak-Kars railway opening, the May 21-23 Russian state escalation pattern, the May 22 Arshakyan CIS IPA TRIPP / Crossroads of Peace address, the May 24-25 OSCE/ODIHR interim observation report, the May 24-25 Kocharyan "Pashinyan = Aliyev" Erebuni address, the broader May 2026 Armenia-Russia-Western-partner triangulation. All factual claims sourced to the named Azatutyun article; OWL editorial framings on the EAEU-confidence-positioning analysis, the EU-dual-track-architecture analysis, the visa-liberalisation-commitment substantive analysis, the Shirak-region campaign-context analysis, the competing-framings rhetorical-architecture analysis, and the watch-list indicators are clearly identified as such.