Thousands of opposition supporters have gathered in the Armenian capital, Yerevan, to warn the government of concessions to Azerbaijan’s potential enemy over the long-disputed Nagorno-Karabakh region. Opposition parties have accused Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan of plotting to cede all of Karabakh to Azerbaijan after he told lawmakers last month that “the international community is urging Armenia to reduce its demands for Karabakh.” On Sunday, several thousand opposition supporters gathered in the central square of the French capital, blocking traffic throughout central Yerevan. Protesters shouted for Pasinian to resign, with many holding placards reading “Karabakh.” “Any political regime in Karabakh inside Azerbaijan is unacceptable to us,” said Ishkhan Saghatelyan, opposition leader and deputy speaker of the National Assembly. “Pasinian has betrayed the trust of the people and he must leave,” he told reporters at the rally, adding that the protest movement “will lead to the overthrow of the government in the near future.” Addressing the crowd, the opposition leader announced that a “large-scale campaign of political disobedience” would begin next week. “I urge everyone to go on strike. I urge students not to attend classes. “Traffic will be completely blocked in the center of Yerevan,” he said.
“Threat of disturbance”
On Saturday, the National Security Service of Armenia warned of a “real threat of mass unrest in the country.” Yerevan and Baku have been embroiled in a territorial dispute since the 1990s over Karabakh, a predominantly Armenian-populated mountainous region of Azerbaijan. Karabakh was at the center of a six-week war in 2020 that claimed more than 6,500 lives before culminating in a Russian-brokered ceasefire. Under the agreement, Armenia ceded territories it had controlled for decades, and Russia deployed about 2,000 peacekeepers to oversee the ceasefire. In April, Pasinyan and Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev met for rare EU-mediated talks in Brussels, after which they instructed their foreign ministers to “begin preparatory work for peace talks”. The meeting came after an uprising in Karabakh on March 25 saw Azerbaijan occupy a strategic village in the area under the responsibility of Russian peacekeepers, killing three separatist troops. In mid-March, Baku tabled a series of proposals for a peace deal that includes mutual recognition of the territorial integrity of both sides, meaning Yerevan must agree that Karabakh is part of Azerbaijan. Armenian Foreign Minister Ararat Mirzoyan sparked a controversy at home when he said – commenting on Azerbaijan’s proposal – that for Yerevan “the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict is not a territorial issue but a matter of rights” of the local Armenian population. Armenian separatists in Nagorno-Karabakh seceded from Azerbaijan when the Soviet Union collapsed in 1991. The ensuing conflict has claimed some 30,000 lives since.
