Premier warns of Armenia coup
The prime minister accuses top military officers of a plot after they demanded he step down.
YEREVAN, Armenia — Armenia’s prime minister on Thursday accused top military officers of attempting a coup after they demanded he step down, adding fuel to months of protests calling for his resignation following the country’s defeat in a conflict with Azerbaijan over the Nagorno-Karabakh region.
Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan has faced opposition calls to step down ever since he signed a Nov. 10 peace deal that saw Azerbaijan reclaim control over large parts of Nagorno Karabakh and surrounding areas that had been held by Armenian forces for more than a quarter-century.
The opposition protests gathered pace this week, and the feud with his top military commanders has weakened Pashinyan’s position, raising concerns about stability in the strategic South Caucasus region, where shipments of Azerbaijan’s Caspian crude oil pass through on their way to Western markets.
The immediate trigger for the latest tensions was Pashinyan’s decision this week to oust the first deputy chief of the military’s general staff, which includes the armed forces’ top officers.
In response, the general staff called for Pashinyan’s resignation, but he doubled down and ordered that the chief of the general staff be dismissed.
After denouncing the military’s statement as a “coup attempt,” Pashinyan led his supporters at a rally in the capital, and he addressed them in a dramatic speech in which he said he had considered — but rejected — calls to resign.
“I became the prime minister not on my own will, but because people decided so,” he shouted to the crowd of more than 20,000 people in Republic Square. “Let people demand my resignation or shoot me in the square.”
He warned that the latest developments have led to an “explosive situation, which is fraught with unpredictable consequences.”
In nearby Freedom Square, more than 20,000 opposition supporters held a parallel rally, and some vowed to stay there until Pashinyan stepped down. Demonstrators paralyzed traffic all around Yerevan, chanting “Nikol, you traitor!” and “Nikol, resign!”
There were scuffles in the streets between the sides, but the rival demonstrations later in the day continued in different parts of the capital. As the evening fell, some opposition supporters built barricades on the central avenue to step up pressure on Pashinyan.
The crisis has its roots in Armenia’s humiliating defeat in fighting with Azerbaijan over Nagorno-Karabakh that erupted in late September and lasted 44 days. A Russia-brokered agreement ended the conflict, in which the Azerbaijani army routed Armenian forces, but only after more than 6,000 people died on both sides.
Pashinyan has defended the peace deal as a painful but necessary move to prevent Azerbaijan from overrunning the entire NagornoKarabakh region, which lies within Azerbaijan but was under the control of ethnic Armenian forces backed by Armenia since a separatist war there ended in 1994.
Despite the simmering public anger over the military defeat, Pashinyan has maneuvered to shore up his rule and the protests died down during winter. But the opposition demonstrations resumed with new vigor this week, and then came the spat with the military brass.
Pashinyan fired the deputy chief of the general staff, Lt. Gen. Tiran Khachatryan, this week after he derided the prime minister’s claim that only 10% of Russia-supplied Iskander missiles that Armenia used in the conflict exploded on impact. The general staff responded Thursday with a statement calling for Pashinyan’s resignation and warned the government against using force on the demonstrators. Pashinyan then dismissed the general staff chief, Col. Gen. Onik Gasparyan.