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