YERAVANA: Armenia's drum-playing social-media-savvy leader Nikol Pashinyan, on course for re-election on Sunday, has spent years navigating a fraught balancing act between Russia and the West, drawing accusations of creeping authoritarianism while in office.
The 51-year-old ex-journalist rose to power on the back of a 2018 peaceful street revolution and has built much of his political appeal on a carefully cultivated image of accessibility.
For supporters, Pashinyan remains the same man of 2018: the maverick who walked hundreds of kilometres across Armenia to challenge a corrupt post-Soviet elite, sleeping in the open and speaking to crowds from benches, rooftops and courtyards.
"For me, the most important change that occurred is that the government and the people of Armenia love each other," he told voters during the campaign, saying Sunday's election should become "the day of victory for our love."
But, eight years on from the revolution, the mood around Pashinyan is divided.
When war with Azerbaijan erupted in 2020 over the breakaway region of Karabakh, the then polished politician with a soft handshake and a bashful smile transformed almost overnight into a bellicose military leader.
He regularly addressed the nation on television with impassioned war cries, calling on Armenians to "unite and break the enemy's backbone" and saying there can be no diplomatic solution to the conflict.
Two military defeats later, Karabakh lost and hosting 100,000 ethnic Armenian refugees, Pashinyan now portrays himself as the only man who can secure long-term peace.
The conflict also pushed him to look for new allies, loosening Armenia's dependence on traditional backer Moscow -- angering the Kremlin -- while deepening ties with the EU and the United States.
Polls suggest Pashinyan's Civil Contract party has a comfortable lead.
Authoritarian methods
Before coming to power, Pashinyan was a seasoned campaigner against the country's Russia-friendly leadership.
He spent more than a year in hiding after being accused of provoking riots following the 2008 presidential election, when 10 people died in clashes between police and supporters of the defeated opposition candidate.
He surrendered in 2009, was jailed until 2011, and then elected to parliament the next year.
Activists and analysts say Pashinyan's record in office has not been the clean-cut democratic reformer many imagined in 2018.
Critics accuse him of using the courts, police and bureaucracy to pressure his opponents -- including the powerful Armenian church.
"The state of democracy in Armenia can be described as a gradual transition from populism to authoritarian methods of governance," said analyst Gevorg Pogosyan.
"The prisons are overcrowded with people persecuted for their political views," said another analyst, Vigen Hakobyan.
Pashinyan has compared opposition leaders to "mafia bosses" who "should work in penal colonies."
'I love you'
On the campaign trail, he has travelled on a bus across Armenia, stopping to greet supporters with his trademark phrase: "Hello, beloved people. So, how are you, how are things?"
Between stops, he broadcasts live from the bus, showing himself eating local snacks -- part of a constant stream of social media content aimed at showing he has not retreated behind the walls of power.
"I love all of you," he recently wrote on Instagram, celebrating that his videos -- often showing him just sitting in his office with popular music in the background -- had racked up 100 million views.
This year he formed a band, in which he plays the drums -- holding concerts in Yerevan and out in the country to loyal supporters.
In a display of performative diplomacy in May, Pashinyan picked up the sticks as visiting French President Emmanuel Macron took to the microphone to sing a power ballad by French-Armenian singer Charles Aznavour.
The made-for-TV moment was a clear sign of who Europe wants to stay in power.
Born in 1975 in the northern town of Ijevan, Pashinyan studied journalism at Yerevan State University in the first years after the collapse of the Soviet Union.
He was expelled -- he says for his political activity, though the university said for absences.
In previous campaigns, he brandished a hammer as a symbol of political confrontation.
This time, hand hearts have become his emblem.