Tens of thousands of demonstrators gathered in Yerevan, Armenia’s capital, on Sunday to demand Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan’s resignation after the government agreed to transfer control of several border villages to Azerbaijan.
The protest was part of a series of rallies led by Bagrat Galstanyan, the archbishop of the Tavush diocese, who formed the movement Tavush For The Homeland following Armenia’s agreement in April to cede control of four villages in the region.
Although the villages were the movement’s core issue, it has expanded to address a wide array of complaints about Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan and his government.
Movement leaders at Sunday’s rally expressed their support for Archbishop Bagrat Galstanyan to become the next prime minister.
The decision to cede the villages in Tavush followed a rapid military campaign by Azerbaijan in September, which forced ethnic Armenian separatist authorities in the Karabakh region to capitulate.
Following Azerbaijan’s takeover of Karabakh, nearly 120,000 ethnic Armenians fled the region.
Ethnic Armenian fighters, supported by Armenian forces, had taken control of Karabakh in 1994 at the end of a six-year war.
Azerbaijan regained some of the territory in a 2020 conflict that ended with an armistice and the deployment of Russian peacekeepers, who began withdrawing this year.
Prime Minister Pashinyan has stated that Armenia needs to quickly define the border with Azerbaijan to prevent another round of hostilities.
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