Dozens of people were injured today in Armenia during a demonstration in front of the parliament demanding the resignation of Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan after the police used stun grenades, an AFP photographer reported, quoted by BTA.
Injured protesters were taken to hospitals by ambulance, some with leg or stomach injuries.
The Caucasian country's Ministry of Internal Affairs announced the arrest of 60 people out of several thousand demonstrators present for "disobeying the lawful demands of the police".
The demonstration was held to protest the transfer of border villages to Azerbaijan and sparked chaotic scenes as demonstrators tried to break through the police cordon.
The protest against Pashinyan was led by the charismatic Archbishop Bagrat Galstanyan, who condemned the transfer of territories to Azerbaijan as “illegal” and calls it “one-sided and humiliating concessions” on the part of Armenia.
Addressing the MPs, Nikol Pashinyan assured that Yerevan is ready to sign a peace agreement with Baku “within one month”.
Pashinyan defends the recent handover of four border villages to Azerbaijan as a necessary concession to avoid a new conflict with Baku.
The two countries faced each other in two wars, one in 1990 won by Armenia and the second in 2020 won by Azerbaijan. Baku also won a landslide victory in 2023 over Armenian separatists from Nagorno-Karabakh, regaining control of that enclave.
This defeat has poisoned relations between Armenia and its traditional ally Russia, which Yerevan accuses of inaction.
Pashinyan said today that his country will leave the Collective Security Treaty Organization (CSTO) – a military alliance of former Soviet Union countries led by Moscow. However, he did not give a clear deadline for this exit.