Armenian prime minister denounces military coup attempt

Prime Minister of Armenia Nikol Pashinyan accused the army of an attempted coup and urged his supporters to take to the streets on Thursday, after months of tension over his handling of last year’s war with Azerbaijan in the disputed region of Nagorno-Karabaj.

The country’s main military commanders demanded the prime minister’s resignation on Thursday, which sparked a possible power struggle in the Caucasus nation.

Pashinyan denounced the statement as an attempted coup and called on supporters to demonstrate.

“I consider the declaration of the General Staff of the Armed Forces as an attempted military coup. I’m inviting all our fans to Republic Square right now, ”he wrote on Facebook, referring to a central square in the capital, Yerevan.

In a live message on this social network, Pashinyan later announced the dismissal of General Onik Gasparian, in front of the staff.

Hours later, led a demonstration of his supporters in the center of the capital Armenia and he assured that, although the situation is “tense”, “everyone agrees that there should be no clashes”.

“The situation can be managed”the president said, megaphone in hand, in front of hundreds of supporters who marched through downtown Yerevan, summoned by Pashinyan himself.

The opposition, which has been calling for Pashinyan’s resignation since Armenia’s military defeat against Azerbaijan in Nagorno-Karabakh at the end of 2020, also intended to take to the streets on Thursday. The main Armenian opposition party called on the prime minister seize their “last chance” to come from power without violence and avoid “a civil war”.

The day before, Pashinyan sacked a member of Gasparian, Tigran Khachatryan, This has led the staff to demand his resignation, believing that the Prime Minister “is no longer in a position to take the decisions imposed on him”.

Khachatryan had ridiculed Pashinyan’s claims that Iskander missiles supplied by Russia, Armenia’s main military ally, failed to hit targets during the war with Azerbaijan in the disputed region of Nagorno-Karabaj.

The staff statement indicates that the dismissal has been effected “Exclusively on the basis of personal feelings and ambitions” from Pashinyan.

Pashinyan and his government “They are not able to make adequate decisions”said the statement, denouncing “The attacks by the authorities aim to discredit the armed forces.”

The military also accused the executive of “Don’t be efficient” and, in a veiled reference to the recent war with Azerbaijan, make “serious mistakes in foreign policy” who brought the land closer to destruction.

For his part, Pashinyan, whose resignation has also been requested by the Armenian opposition for more than three months, said that the military “must answer” social questions so that “the truth about the war” in Karabakh is known, which resulted in more than 4,000 deaths on the Armenian side.

“But there are generals who don’t like to be asked questions ”, nodded

National humiliation

Kremlin spokesperson, Dmitry Peskov, he said that Moscow was concerned about the events in Yerevan and called for calm.

Pashinyan has been under pressure since the signing of a peace accord negotiated by Russia that ended the conflict over Karabakh, a region of Armenian origin that was separated from Azerbaijani control during a war in the early 1990s.

At the end of September, new fighting broke out in the region with Azerbaijani forces supported by its ally Turkey are making steady progress.

After six weeks of fighting and bombing, killed around 6,000 people, a ceasefire agreement which transferred swathes of territory to Azerbaijan and allowed the deployment of Russian peacekeepers.

Azerbaijan regained control of several regions around Karabakh that its separatist forces had taken in the 1990 war and the town of Download, of strategic and symbolic importance.

Armenia had controlled the territory since its victory in the previous war (1992-1994), after which a fragile ceasefire, broken many times, came into effect, although, with the exception of the four-day war of 2016, never on a large scale.

Under the Moscow sponsored agreement who ended the war on November 10, Azerbaijan will control more than two thirds of the territory of Karabakh, Republic which proclaimed its independence after the holding of three referendums (1991, 2006 and 2017), although this has never been recognized by the international community.

The deal was seen as a national humiliation for many Armenians., although Pashinyan said he had no choice but to accept or suffer even greater losses.

The prime minister faced protests in the capital, Yerevan, where protesters stormed government offices the night he was signed and continued to meet regularly.

Pashinyan rejected requests to resign and early elections despite building pressure.

The newspaper’s former editor-in-chief Pashinyan, 45, came to power leading peaceful protests in 2018 and initially brought a wave of optimism to Armenia, a deeply impoverished former Soviet state that also borders Iran. , Georgia and Turkey.

But his handling of the war drew heavy criticism from Pashinyan’s political opponents, including former leader Serzh Sarkissian, who was forced to resign in 2018.

(With information from AFP, EFE, Europa Press)

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