In the run-up to the 2026 parliamentary elections, Armenian people and the country’s government have increasingly found themselves in the vortex of geopolitical intrigues and great powers’ competition. September asked a socialist scholar from Armenia for an insider perspective on the economic and political situation in the country as the Civil Contract party and its leader, Nikol Pashinyan, fight for reelection amid rising internal and external pressure.

The BRICS have a very contradictory image: some fear or pin a lot of hopes on them as a rising hegemonic alliance, a champion of the Global South, while others are much more sceptical, arguing that the interests of their core members are too contradictory for the BRICS to act as a unified entity in global politics. But does the BRICS really represent the Global South? And how do they compare as an institute of non-hegemonic internationalism to the Third World organisations that defined the 20th century, such as the Non-Aligned Movement and the Group of 77?