Thousands of people demanding Prime Minister Nikol Pashinian’s resignation again rallied in Yerevan on Friday on the second day of demonstrations led by Archbishop Bagrat Galstanian and backed by virtually all Armenian opposition groups.
Prime Minister Nikol Pashinian on Tuesday accused the organizers of continuing protests against his territorial concessions to Azerbaijan of trying to provoke another Armenian-Azerbaijani war with the aim of toppling him.
Hundreds of people protesting against the Armenian government’s decision to cede key border areas to Azerbaijan continued to march to Yerevan on Monday, with a senior clergyman leading them insisting that their campaign is gaining momentum.
Investigators have decided not to prosecute any of the officials blamed by Prime Minister Nikol Pashinian for Azerbaijan’s seizure last year of land belonging to an Armenian border village, Prosecutor-General Anna Vardapetian said on Friday.
Police in Armenia detained early on Thursday dozens of people in a border village in the northern Tavush province trying to prevent the controversial handover of adjacent border areas to Azerbaijan.
Foreign Minister Ararat Mirzoyan has again complained that Azerbaijan remains reluctant to recognize Armenia’s borders through a bilateral peace treaty, seemingly contradicting what Prime Minister Nikol Pashinian said last week.
Armenia appears to have accepted Kazakhstan’s proposal to host fresh Armenian-Azerbaijani negotiations on a bilateral peace treaty.
Armenia has completed an investigation into the April 10 skirmish at the border with Azerbaijan in which one Azerbaijani serviceman was wounded, concluding that the gunfire exchange occurred because of the violation of border service rules by several Armenian servicemen.
Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinian has again signaled Yerevan’s readiness to withdraw from four formerly Azeri-populated villages at the northeastern border with Azerbaijan that used to be part of Soviet Azerbaijan, but have been under Armenia’s military control since the early 1990s.
Members of opposition factions in the Armenian parliament said their concerns over negotiations with Azerbaijan on border delimitation issues were not allayed by government officials after a special session held upon their initiative on Tuesday.
A senior Armenian official conducting talks with Azerbaijan on border issues has denied there a final decision on starting the demarcation process in Tavush.
Further economic aid pledged by the United States and the European Union will be nowhere near enough to ease Armenia’s economic dependence on Russia, an Armenian opposition parliamentarian insisted on Friday.
The main opposition Hayastan alliance demanded on Tuesday that the Armenian parliament debate Prime Minister Nikol Pashinian’s controversial plans to hand over disputed border areas to Azerbaijan.
Prime Minister Nikol Pashinian questioned at the weekend Azerbaijan’s stated respect for Armenia’s territorial integrity while reaffirming his readiness to unilaterally hand over some of the contested border areas to Baku.
Russian troops and border guards stationed in Armenia are “the only real guarantee” of the country’s sovereignty, the Russian Foreign Ministry said on Friday.
Prime Minister Nikol Pashinian welcomed on Thursday a European Parliament resolution construed by him as an endorsement of his administration’s possible decision to seek Armenia’s membership in the European Union.
Armenia will leave the Collective Security Treaty Organization (CSTO) if its lingering security concerns are not addressed by the Russian-led military alliance, Prime Minister Nikol Pashinian warned on Tuesday.
Just days after the latest round of talks on delimiting the Armenian-Azerbaijani borer, Azerbaijan demanded at the weekend that Armenia immediately and unconditionally withdraw from four border villages.
Foreign Minister Ararat Mirzoyan indicated on Thursday that he and his Azerbaijani counterpart Jeyhun Bayramov did not make significant progress towards an Armenian-Azerbaijani peace treaty during two-day talks held in Berlin last week.
Armenian prosecutors have refused to launch a formal criminal investigation into a recent report that questioned the legality of lavish campaign donations received by the ruling Civil Contract party ahead of last September’s municipal elections in Yerevan.
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