A defeated Armenia descends into turmoil

Ever since its disastrous military defeat at the hands of Azerbaijan last year, Armenia has suffered from a wave of political unrest, with rallies and protests continuing sporadically. The principal demand of the protestors has been the resignation of the incumbent Prime Minister, Nikol Pashinyan, whose agreement to a ceasefire favourable to Azerbaijan following his country’s defeat in Nagorno-Karabakh was viewed as a national betrayal.

However, the most serious declaration of opposition to the Prime Minister came on Thursday, when the general staff of the armed forces, Onik Gasparyan, joined in the calls for Pashinyan to resign. Gasparyan was prompted by Pashinyan’s dismissal of his deputy, who had publicly ridiculed the Prime Minister’s claim that his country’s military had been failed by faulty Russian missiles. Moscow, too, weighed into the dispute with the deputy chairman of the Duma defence committee attacking Pashinyan for ‘trying to absolve himself of the blame for the failings in the Karabakh war’.