Despite The Fact That President Pashinyan’s Coalition Leads With 58.45 Percent Of The Vote, An Independent Election Observer, Daniel Ioannisian, Told RFE/RL That There Were Several Incidences Of Vote-Buying And Other Illicit Attempts To Influence The June 20 Parliamentary Elections
Armenia is in the midst of a political crisis amid calls for Prime Minister Nikol Pashinian to step down. After top military officers called for him to resign, Pashinian described the move as “an attempted coup.”
Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinian has taken to the streets of Yerevan, along with his supporters on February 25 after what he called “an attempted military coup” by Armenian army officers who wrote a letter demanding his resignation
In spite of the oblique language, the response was immediate and explosive. Many accused Pashinyan of trying to incite violence against his opponents, and even in more generous interpretations that he was engaging in an unproductive search for enemies when the country is in crisis. “Don’t you have anything better to do than to watch dozens of videos?” one user asked under his post.
Scores of people were seen leaving the war-torn Nagorno-Karabakh region for Armenia’s capital, Yerevan, on November 11. The road they were taking passes through Kalbacar, a corridor formerly held by Armenia
A cathedral in Azerbaijan’s breakaway region of Nagorno-Karabakh was damaged in fighting on October 8. Armenia has blamed Azerbaijan, which denies targeting any religious sites. Districts across Azerbaijan have also come under attack from the Armenian side. The violent conflict between the two sides, which resulted in a war in the 1990s, flared up
The seizures come as Minasyan has been taking a higher-profile role as a government critic-in-exile. In April he was charged with money laundering, among other crimes, and has refused to come to Armenia to face the charges. (He lives abroad – it is not clear where – and was formerly Armenia’s ambassador to the Vatican.)
Former President Serzh Sargsyan announced in 2017 a plan to increase the population to 4 million by 2040 by increasing the birthrate and discouraging emigration. Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan, after taking over the next year, one-upped Sargsyan by promising to boost the population to 5 million by 2050
Since the new government took over, “fake news” has become a political tool in the hands of former regime loyalists, argued Arman Babajanyan, an independent member of parliament
In their own words, eight working Armenians open up about how their country’s 2018 “velvet revolution” has affected their lives