“We are going to unite the right forces, the ones that are truly in opposition,” he told reporters during his ongoing trial in Yerevan.
Karapetian did not name any of those forces. He said he wants the Armenian opposition to rally around his bloc’s program of “peace without concessions” to Azerbaijan that will be unveiled by the end of this month. He did not shed light on the program either.
Karapetian first floated the idea of an “opposition coalition” in the wake of last June’s disputed parliamentary elections in which Strong Armenia finished second behind Pashinian’s Civil Contract party. He called for the creation of a “coordinating council” that would discuss and take joint actions against the Armenian government.
No such umbrella structure has been set up so far, even though former President Robert Kocharian’s Hayastan alliance, the second opposition group represented in the Armenian parliament, was quick to welcome the idea.
Both Strong Armenia and Hayastan chose to take up their seats in the National Assembly despite rejecting the official election results as fraudulent. They also refrained from staging post-election street protests in Yerevan.
Karapetian said in early July that such protests could have caused unnecessary “upheavals” in the country. He said that his bloc is waiting for “a number of triggers” which it thinks are necessary for toppling Pashinian.
Karapetian was catapulted into Armenian politics after being arrested in June 2025 just hours after condemning Pashinian’s controversial campaign to depose Catholicos Garegin II. He was charged with calling for a violent regime change and committing financial crimes before being moved to house arrest in December.
The 61-year-old tycoon, who has mostly lived in Russia since the early 1990s, remains under house arrest. He was unable to physically attend his bloc’s election campaign rallies for that reason.