Protesters in Armenia’s Yerevan call on PM to resign over Karabakh crisis
Protesters in Armenia’s capital Yerevan called on Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan to resign Tuesday, hours after he denounced calls for a “coup” as Azerbaijan launched a military operation in Armenian-populated Karabakh, AFP reports.
Hundreds of people gathered in Yerevan’s Republic Square, outside Pashinyan’s offices, to denounce his handling of the Karabakh crisis, according to an AFP journalist on the scene, with demonstrators shouting “Nikol traitor!” and “Nikol resign!”
Pashinyan, who has faced protests in Armenia since Yerevan lost a 2020 war with Azerbaijan, earlier warned against calls for a coup.
Armenia’s opposition has accused Pashinyan of being weak on Karabakh, a breakaway region populated mainly by ethnic Armenians over which Yerevan and Baku have been locked in a dispute over for decades.
Armenia is not going to launch military actions because of the situation in Nagorno-Karabakh, Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan said.
— NEXTA (@nexta_tv) September 19, 2023
He emphasized that the republic has no army in Nagorno-Karabakh. " At the moment, we will not take any rash actions," the head of state… pic.twitter.com/hJP9L2qRIF
Several hundred people responded to a call by opposition parties to take to the streets over Pashinyan’s Karabakh policies.