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Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan said the situation in the country was tense but manageable after accusing the army general staff of attempting a coup and leading a march by his supporters in Yerevan, BTA reported, citing AFP.
“The situation is tense, but everyone agrees that there should be no confrontations. The situation is under control,” he said in a megaphone while walking with hundreds of his followers through the streets of the capital. Hours earlier, the 45-year-old prime minister accused the General Staff of planning a coup after he called for his resignation and fired his boss, Onik Gasparyan. “Nicole – Prime Minister!” Chanted her supporters, gathered around Pashinyan, her son, and their bodyguards. At one point, the march passed a group of opposition supporters who called Pashinyan a “traitor.”
The main opposition party, Prosperous Armenia, called on the prime minister to use “his last chance” to leave power without violence and avoid a “civil war”. “We must avoid clashes. There is a brotherly atmosphere in Armenia,” Pashinyan said at today’s march. The Armenian prime minister has been under pressure from the opposition for several weeks to resign over Armenia’s military defeat against Azerbaijan in the fall of 2020 in the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict.
Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan previously announced that he had fired the Chief of Staff of the Armenian Armed Forces, Onik Gasparyan, world agencies reported. “Today I decided to remove the Chief of Staff and his first deputy. The Defense Minister is preparing a decision to appoint a new Chief of Staff and a new deputy,” Pashinyan said in a statement to people on Facebook. The armed forces issued a statement calling for the resignation of Pashinyan and his government. However, Pashinyan described the statement as an attempted military coup and asked his followers to gather in Republic Square.
Armenia
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