Europe Wins Again. Obviously.
Armenia went to the polls yesterday. And the results are exactly what you’d expect if you’d been paying attention for the past five years, rather than wallowing in Kremlin nostalgia like a damp sock.
Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan declared victory on Monday, with his Civil Contract Party leading with 52.5% of the vote.  Armenia, a landlocked country the size of Belgium that Russia has spent decades treating as a vassal state, has looked at its options and made a decision that required roughly the same level of intellectual effort as choosing between a Michelin-starred restaurant and a skip fire.
They chose Europe.
This election was less a routine vote than a referendum on Pashinyan’s post-2020 course reducing dependence on Russia and moving toward an explicit European orientation. And Russia, naturally, did everything in its power to stop it. According to Reuters, citing Western intelligence officials, the election faced heavy Russian covert interference, including disinformation campaigns and a plan to transport Russian Armenians into Armenia to sway the vote. One analyst collective described it as one of the largest state-backed disinformation campaigns in modern European history. And Armenia still told them to get lost.
Putin had already warned Armenia it would face economic consequences for drifting westward, and introduced restrictions on Armenian agricultural exports in the weeks before the vote.  Threats, propaganda, economic blackmail. The full Russian toolkit. Result: irrelevant.
Now, Trump, Tucker Carlson and JD Vance would like you to believe that Russia represents some superior civilisational model. A proud, white, Christian fortress holding the line against the Muslim hordes supposedly swamping Europe. It is a compelling narrative, in the same way that flat earth theory is compelling if you ignore every single fact available to you.
Here is one such fact: between 10 and 15 percent of Russia’s own population is Muslim. Tatars, Bashkirs, Chechens, Ingush, Dagestanis. Millions of them. Russia is, by its own demographic reality, a multi-ethnic, multi-faith state with a larger Muslim population than most of Western Europe. But you’re not supposed to know that. It complicates the story.
Meanwhile, the Muslim share of the EU population sits at around 5 percent. But the Tucker Carlsons of the world need you frightened, so the numbers get quietly shuffled off stage.
So Armenia joins the queue. Behind Georgia, Ukraine, Moldova, and every Eastern European country that isn’t currently run by a Slovak who seems to have wandered in from a Moscow focus group. The pattern is not subtle. Every country that has actually experienced Russian influence in practice is sprinting in the opposite direction. The only nation currently moving toward Russia’s orbit is the United States, which managed to elect a man whose foreign policy instincts were apparently shaped by a property developer’s admiration for strongmen with good buildings.
The world watches America and hopes it finds its way back. Most people think it will. Eventually. The damage, however, is already considerable, and democracy, like a soufflé, does not always survive rough handling.
Armenia made its choice. The right one. Obviously.
Gandalv / @Microinteracti1
Per i popoli che sognano di entrare nell’Unione Europea,l’Europa non è soltanto un’istituzione o un mercato comune. È un immaginario morale. È la promessa della libertà e di una vita dignitosa. Quell’idea d’Europa oggi ha vinto in #Armenia, così come aveva già vinto in Moldova./1
IN CINQUECENTO per @anneapplebaum e @radeksikorski! Una serata straordinaria a Una Collina di Libri. “La buona notizia è che i dittatori prima o poi sbagliano. Fanno disastri. Vanno in guerra per mostrare quanto sono bravi. E vengono sconfitti”
So looking forward to hosting a special conversation with @anneapplebaum & @radeksikorski, about Autocracy, Inc., Russia’s war on Ukraine, and the many threats to the Free World. Sat., June 6, 2026, Vittorio Veneto, Italy. At @collinadilibri. Book a seat: https://t.co/bsDpAjV04a
For all those repeating Iranian lies about the Kuwait airport being allegedly hit by a misfired Patriot interceptor: footage clearly shows a deliberate attack by Shahed drones on an air terminal full of civilian passengers.
Orban ranted about this issue for years, insulting Ukrainians official and population over it constantly, it was a settled matter in 3 weeks of Magyar Premiership, proving once and for all that Orban far right government never cared about Hungarian minorities in Ukraine but
“Spesso l’obiettivo non è convincere le persone di una menzogna, ma fare sì che temano chi la dice”.
Una nostra piccola biblioteca di buone letture che vi suggeriamo, verso l’incontro con @anneapplebaum e @radeksikorski a Una Collina di Libri.
Sab 6 giugno, h 19, Vittorio Veneto
Imagine how this message will be received in the Kremlin: the U.S. ambassador to NATO won’t even say outright that the attack came from Russia. Think about the calculations they’ll make when planning future attacks…
The only way the war truly ends is by Russia losing and leaving every inch of Ukrainian territory. You can call that a "negotiated settlement" if you want, but it’s the truth. Anything else would be at best a pause before Russia resumes its attempt to destroy Ukraine.
ECCO UNA COLLINA DI LIBRI! 9 incontri in primavera e autunno 2026. Da tutto il mondo sulle Colline del Prosecco. Applebaum, Biedermann, Sikorski, Costa, Geda, Montanaro, Monda, Dante Carraro, Josi&Scattaglia. La passione della scrittura e della libertà ➡️ https://t.co/Ewg16tRTSU
There are good results from the warriors of the SSU Special Operations Center “A.” A Russian FSB headquarters has been struck, and a Pantsir-S1 surface-to-air missile system has been destroyed in our temporarily occupied territory. Thanks to just this one operation, Russian losses amount to around a hundred occupiers killed and wounded. Russians must feel that they must bring this war of theirs to an end. Ukraine’s medium- and long-range sanctions will keep working.
Sabato 6 giugno intervisto @anneapplebaum e @sikorskiradek a Vittorio Veneto, Teatro da Ponte, per Una Collina di Libri. Ore 19. Per capire in modo fulminante la differenza tra la propaganda dei totalitarismi del Novecento e dei regimi del XXI secolo, consiglio questo gran libro
Nardella si è mai domandato come siano percepiti in Ucraina Merkel e l’intero processo di Minsk? Ma dopo quattro, anzi dodici anni di guerra, un politico serio può permettersi di non studiare le origini e l’andamento del più grande conflitto sul continente europeo dalla Seconda/1