YEREVAN, June 7 -- The last polling stations in Armenia shuttered at 8:00 p.m. on Sunday, handing ballot-counters a question that Kremlin officials had already decided to answer before the first tally was announced: was any of it legitimate?

Nearly half of Armenia's electorate turned out - the Central Electoral Commission reported 1,224,957 ballots cast out of 2,503,976 eligible voters, or 48.92 percent, by 5:00 p.m., three hours before polls closed. Final turnout figures were due at 9:00 p.m. local time. By almost any measure, that pace demolished the 38.52 percent recorded at the same hour in the 2021 snap elections, suggesting that an unusually large share of Armenians found the stakes of this vote - alignment with Europe or a return ...