more than 200 anti-government protesters arrested in Yerevan after villages were handed over to Azerbaijan

Some 226 anti-government demonstrators were arrested in Armenia for attempting to block roads in the capital, Yerevan, the Interior Ministry announced in a press release on Monday, May 27. Several hundred demonstrators took to the streets as part of a “national campaign of disobedience” on the initiative of Archbishop Bagrat Galstanian, who calls for the resignation of Prime Minister Nikol Pashinian.

The latter is criticized for having agreed, last month, to cede territories to Azerbaijan that Armenia had controlled since the 1990s, as part of peace talks. Armenia returned four border villages to Azerbaijan on Friday in a key step towards normalizing relations between the two rival countries, which have fought each other in several wars. The ceded territory is of strategic importance to landlocked Armenia because it controls sections of a vital route to Georgia.

Before Monday’s marches, a new demonstration had already brought together thousands of people the day before in Yerevan, to demand the resignation of the Prime Minister. Nikol Pashinian’s regime remains steadfast in the face of this challenge, despite Bagrat Galstanian’s attempts to launch a motion of no confidence against the Prime Minister. According to Armenian law, this religious leader from the Tavouch region, where villages were returned to Azerbaijan, cannot run for the post of Prime Minister because of his dual Armenian and Canadian nationality.