Armenian protesters vow to oust prime minister

YEREVAN — Tens of thousands of protesters flooded the Armenian capital on Thursday, as opposition leaders called for the prime minister to be removed from office over plans he says will bring peace with long-time rival Azerbaijan.

Dressed in white robes and speaking from a stage on Yerevan’s central Republic Square, prominent Archbishop Bagrat Galstanyan issued an ultimatum to PM Nikol Pashinyan, giving him an hour to resign. After the deadline expired it was extended by 15 minutes, which also passed without a public response from the prime minister.

“As he has not reacted, he has shown he despises and rejects those who elected him,” Galstanyan told the crowd. “We will force him to do it.”

The clergyman called on the Armenian parliament to begin the process of removing Pashinyan, and vowed acts of “peaceful civil disobedience” would follow if they did not. He opened the protests with a rendition of the national anthem and a recital of the Lord’s prayer.

Riot police with metal shields and helmets formed a line between demonstrators and the government building that houses Pashinyan’s office, as well as reportedly around the parliament.

As the crowds grew the National Security Service, Armenia’s domestic security agency, urged the protesters to remain peaceful. “Any illegal behavior that threatens the constitutional order will be neutralized using all the tools defined by the law,” it warned in a statement.

‘Vulnerable model’

Pashinyan announced earlier this year he intended to hand back four border villages that are inside the internationally-recognized territory of neighboring Azerbaijan, but that have been occupied by Armenia since the 1990s. According to the reformist leader, Azerbaijan had not agreed in exchange to return territory occupied by its own troops inside Armenia, but the unilateral move would help avoid another war between the two countries. A process of border demarcation, he said, would ensure future conflicts were avoided.

However, residents from the villages, as well as opposition activists and supporters from Armenia’s surrounding Tavush region, began a march to Yerevan on foot last week. Galstanyan, whose church is in Tavush, led the column into the capital where hundreds were already waiting for them in the city center.

prominent Archbishop Bagrat Galstanyan issued an ultimatum to PM Nikol Pashinyan, giving him an hour to resign. | Karen Minasyan/AFP via Getty Images

While Galstanyan initially claimed the protesters were only demanding that the border demarcation process end, he later insisted that Pashinyan step down, alleging he had “completely failed in the management of the country.” Prominent opposition figures also addressed the crowd.

“Pashinyan needs to go,” one middle-aged demonstrator told POLITICO, saying he preferred not to give his name as he feared reprisals. Asked who should take his place as prime minister, or how another leader would avoid conflict with Azerbaijan while still keeping the four villages, the demonstrator said: “Someone else will have a better plan.”

Pashinyan has hailed the surrender of the four villages as a major step toward normalizing relations with Azerbaijan — the two countries have fought regularly since the fall of the USSR in 1991 — and respecting its international legal obligations. “We are reproducing the [legal] borders … at the time of the collapse of the Soviet Union,” he said last week.

Earlier the same day, officials in Yerevan and Moscow confirmed that Russian border guards — stationed along Armenia’s frontiers with Azerbaijan since the 1990s — had been asked to leave their posts and begin withdrawing.

In recent years, Armenia has frozen its membership in the Russian-led CSTO military alliance, which refused its calls for support when Azerbaijan launched an offensive against the country in September 2022.

Under Pashinyan’s leadership, the country has instead held joint drills with U.S. forces, dispatched humanitarian aid to Ukraine, and even hinted it could one day apply for membership in the EU. Armenia’s opposition parties have been critical of the country’s pivot to the West, claiming historic ally Russia would otherwise defend their interests — despite the Kremlin growing increasingly deferential to Azerbaijan and its ally Turkey since the start of the war in Ukraine.

Russian peacekeepers also failed to intervene when Azerbaijani troops and tanks rolled into the breakaway region of Nagorno-Karabakh last September. The mountainous region is within Azerbaijan’s internationally-recognized borders, but had been controlled by Armenia since a war in the 1990s. The sudden invasion, which followed an almost year-long blockade of the region’s supply lines, triggered the exodus of around 100,000 ethnic Armenian residents.

“The model by which we have problems with our neighbors and we have to invite others to protect us — it doesn’t matter who these others are — is a very vulnerable model,” Pashinyan told POLITICO last year, while vowing to resolve Armenia’s long-standing and bitter strife with Azerbaijan.