“I consider the General Staff statement as an attempt at a military coup. I now invite all of our supporters to Republic Square. I will address the nation live shortly,” Pashinyan said on Facebook on Thursday, according to the state news agency Armenpress. . .
Onik Gasparyan, the Chief of the General Staff of the Army, issued a statement earlier in the day criticizing Pashinyan’s decision to fire Tiran Khacharyan, the first deputy chief of the General Staff.
Gasparyan called for Pashinyan’s resignation, saying the prime minister’s cabinet should also resign.
“The prime minister and the government are no longer able to make reasonable decisions,” the army statement said.
“For a long time, the Armenian armed forces patiently tolerated the incumbent government’s” attacks “designed to slander the armed forces, but everything has its limits,” Armenpress said.
The statement was signed by Gasparyan, his deputies and top military commanders who make up the General Staff of the Armenian Armed Forces.
State media reported that the General Staff said the “ineffective” administration of the government and “serious mistakes in foreign policy” had brought the country to the brink.
“The military has always been with the people, just as the people are with the military,” the statement added.
The crisis follows months of criticism of Pashinyan over his handling of the Armenian war with Azerbaijan in the disputed Nagorno-Karabakh area last year.
In November 2020, Pashinyan announced that he had signed an “unspeakably painful agreement” with Russia and Azerbaijan to end the war just hours after Azerbaijan claimed it had captured the region’s strategic city of Shusha.
Anti-Pashinyan demonstrations started after he signed the agreement. The protesters entered the parliament building at one point and attacked the president of the National Assembly, but tensions have eased in recent months.
Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said in a conference call with journalists on Thursday that Russia is following developments with “concern” but that the issue was an internal one for the Armenian government.