The Prime Minister of Armenia is under fire from his own people who want him to resign from office due to Nagorno-Karabakh agreeing to disarm. The Prime Minister of Armenia Nikol Pashinyan has been in office since 2018 and was in office during the defeat to Azerbaijan in a 2020 war. When he took office the other politicians in the running criticized him for his support of the separatist movement. As of recently he failed to support the Armenian separatist movement which was a failed movement and led to the final collapse of Karabakh Armenian authorities.
This movement could have many repercussions and what the prime minister claimed he was trying to do was “The enemy is at our doorstep. We must change authorities to change national policy” which prompted Lawmaker Ishkhan Saghatelyan to call a parliamentary opposition to launch their impeachment process to get him out of office. If they do get him out of office then the question becomes will they try and bring back the separatist movement or revamp some of the ideas and try and gain back land that Prime minister Nikol Pashinyan failed to keep. If parliament does succeed in voting the Prime Minister out of office then they will have to deal with a massive amount of issues including the angered citizens who accused the Prime Minister of wanting to “ethnically cleanse” the region which he denied.
Overall, I think that this story is a big deal as it actually spreads into what we’ve been talking about in class, with Russia which had peacekeeping troops on the ground in Karabakh since the end of the 2020 war. It They hoped for a “peaceful” resolution to the conflict, without mentioning a ceasefire agreement. But later when Pashinyan was on a phone call with putin he said “noted with satisfaction that it was possible to overcome the acute phase of the conflict, and welcomed the agreement … on a complete cessation of hostilities and the holding of negotiations on September 21”. Russia backed Armenia due to the military agreement they have, so it will be interesting to hear Russia’s reaction if they end up impeaching Prime minister Nikol Pashinyan.
https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2023/9/20/armenia-protesters-demand-pm-resign-after-nagorno-karabakh-ceasefire