In Armenia, thousands of demonstrators against the transfer of villages to Azerbaijan

The anger does not subside. Thousands of people demonstrated on Sunday May 26 in Yerevan, Armenia, to demand the resignation of Prime Minister Nikol Pashinian after the transfer of border villages to Azerbaijan. These new protests were led by the charismatic Archbishop Bagrat Galstanian, a religious leader from the Tavouch region.

A protest movement emerged in April in this Caucasian country after the government agreed to cede territories it had controlled since the 1990s to Baku. Friday, as part of a key step towards the normalization of relations between the two rival countries, which have opposed each other in several wars, Yerevan returned four border villages to Baku.

The ceded territory is of strategic importance to landlocked Armenia because it controls sections of a vital route to Georgia. Armenian residents of neighboring towns say the measure cuts them off from the rest of the country and accuse Prime Minister Nikol Pashinian of ceding territory without getting anything in return. The latter assures for his part that this decision aims to guarantee peace with Baku.